Return to Trieste: A Novel

Alma has spent her entire life running away from difficult memories, from people, and from herself. But her father’s death forces her to return for three short days to Trieste, the city of her childhood and youth. He left her a commentary, a postscript, something more than just an inheritance. On this journey, Alma remembers an eclectic mosaic of her past: her grandparents, intellectuals and bearers of Austro-Hungarian culture; her mother, who helped the mentally ill along with the reformer Franco Basaglia; her father, a member of Marshal Tito’s inner circle; and Vili, the son of the family’s Serbian friends. Alma fears him most of all: a former friend, lover, and now enemy. But a meeting with Vili is inevitable: it is he who will deliver her father’s farewell message. Federica Manzon skillfully explores themes of identity, memory, and history against the backdrop of the painful transition from a united Yugoslavia to the formation of the Serbian and Croatian republics. Trieste, with its unique border town atmosphere, becomes a starting point for reflection on how to gather the disparate parts of the soul together and find your way home. You can have as much freedom as you want in life, but if you can’t say and write what you think, then something very bad is already close. Winner of the Italian literary prize Premio Campiello. Once, over dinner, where they were talking about politics, she noted that in the Balkans you have to be careful where to order brinjevec and where to order slivovitz, so as not to offend anyone, because in these parts even alcohol has become a question of self-identification. How many beginnings can a story have? It depends on who is telling it and how it ends. Modern women interested in history.