“Only that the doors often remain open when they should remain closed.”
The story tells of Elisa, a very young girl who, after the death of her elderly aunt, her guardian, accepts the brief hospitality of her last surviving relative, her cousin Filippo. At Filippo’s home, she is welcomed by her sister-in-law Malvina, and a host of characters crowd their home during long evenings, where they discuss art, politics, society, and any topic on which they can express their views. She also comes into contact with some of Filippo’s friends-cum-enemies, living in the Sans Souci residence – a name that speaks volumes – where she discovers unexpected truths and different perspectives on life.
The Egyptian setting and the historical period surrounding the Second World War have a strong autobiographical undertone, as do the reflections on the contradictions of the Europeans who inhabited that small piece of land, with the typical arrogance of colonizers in their relationships with the native inhabitants, whom they treated with a normal sense of superiority.
It’s interesting to analyze the importance of the community described having a profound connection with art, in its pictorial and musical forms, in contrast to the stench of war and death emanating from Europe. Here we wonder whether this was a deliberate attempt to emphasize the story’s protagonists’ unawareness of the real world, or rather a desire to point the way to a different world, one of art and beauty.
As we read, we sensed a strong reverberation of nineteenth-century English literature, but not in the negative sense of reading something we’d already read; rather, we felt a well-defined, harmonious palette that suits our tastes. This aspect reveals the author’s tastes and cultural background.
This book can hardly be considered a work that reveals the author’s narrative abilities, as we believe she has reached the pinnacle of her writing in other books, but it remains a pleasant work to engage with. A clean style, with a patina of classicism that is hard to ignore.
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Fausta Cialente, Il vento sulla sabbia, Nottetempo, Milano, 2023 (Prima edizione 1972)