The Marshaless

The young Slovenian Zora meets her future husband, the radiology professor Pietro Del Buono, at the end of the First World War. She follows him to Bari in southern Italy, where the two convinced communists lead a bourgeois and yet politically active life in the resistance against Mussolini’s fascism. Zora is domineering, impressive, temperamental and talented, an admirer of Josip Broz Tito, to whom she tries to deliver weapons and whose life her husband saves. She wants to be more than she is capable of, yet she puts her stamp on everyone around her. Her life and the lives of her family, children and grandchildren take place in a time of wars and violence, embittered territorial and ideological battles that have shaped our world to this day. In a magnificent closing monologue, Zora Del Buono senior finishes the telling of her story, a story of love, battles, hate and treachery. "The Marshaless” is a colourful novel packed full of life, about an unforgettable woman and a tragic family fate.