Bambino

Mattia Gregori, known in Trieste as “Bambino”, is a former fascist and the city’s most brutal Blackshirt, who left a trail of death in his wake. Alongside Mattia, at the centre of Marco Balzano’s latest novel is Trieste, a city on the margins, a place that shifts identities fluidly, and one that endures years of relentless upheaval and violence, from Fascism to Nazism, followed by a brief period of Communism. Born in 1900, “Bambino” experiences a childhood scarred by abandonment: his brother leaves for America, his closest friend deserts him, and he learns that the woman who raised him is not his biological mother. A relentless fury rises up within him, an intense anger not easily subdued. Drawn into the ranks of the Blackshirts, he is swept along by a chain of events that spiral into the Second World War, the Nazi occupation, the Yugoslav takeover, and ultimately, the tragedy of the Foibe massacres. After Resto Qui, Balzano returns to historical fiction, probing the limits of the human soul, as well as of history and the effect it has on individuals and on their personal choices. And to do this, he creates a fierce, hardened protagonist who creates an indelible impact on the reader.

Bambino
Marco Balzano
Einaudi, 2024