Paolo’s House: how Borsellino saved my life

Lorenzo is 15 and his family is going through a hard time: since he was fired, his dad spends his days in bed and nothing seems to reach him. He’s a young man full of rage, who suffers from anxiety attacks so strong that they take his breath away. One day at school, a project on the life of Paolo Borsellino is proposed. Lorenzo has no idea of the influence the judge will have, on his life as well. Like an unexpected friend, Borsellino will appear to hold out a hand to him and offer him the strength to react, showing him through his example that even the most intractable enemy can be defeated: whether it’s the Mafia or the darkness that we all have within us. Thirty-one years ago, on 19 July, the Via D’Amelio bombing took place in Palermo: a Mafia-style attack in which judge Paolo Borsellino and the five agents in his escort lost their lives. Talking about the Mafia, explaining it and studying it means not forgetting, trusting in the construction of a conscious future for the coming generations. Written by Sara Loffredi and Marco Lillo, La casa di Paolo. Come Borsellino mi ha salvato la vita (Paolo’s House: how Borsellino saved my life) takes the narrative device of a young man going through a tough time as its starting point. In the face of it, he first ignores it, then becomes ashamed, feels powerless and, finally, finds the strength to react thanks to the story of Borsellino, a figure of great human and moral substance. But it isn’t the protagonist alone who benefits from the judge’s example, so too will other young people, and this will help them become adults. La casa di Paolo isn’t just the story of Borsellino and the fight against the Mafia, it’s also a coming-of-age novel, in which the protagonist finds a way to forgive his father, finding “the tools to stop being afraid”, because even though he was killed in 1992, the magistrate still has a great deal to say to all of us. Outside the narrative fiction – which the author uses to address what the pool was, what it did, what the Mafia was, who the pentiti were – Sara Loffredi also explains what emerged from the ruins of what the Mafia sought to destroy in vain. “Paolo’s House” is the old pharmacy owned by the Borsellino family, in the Kalsa quarter, which the magistrate’s brother repurchased in 2015 and gave to the quarter to become an educational and training centre for young people at risk. It is Salvatore Borsellino himself who provides the preface for the book, a book that has a great deal to say to both young people and adults, because memory is created by bringing recollection to life and into the present.   La casa di Paolo. Come Borsellino mi ha salvato la vita By Sara Loffredi with Marco Lillo; illustrations by Giovanni Scarduelli Rizzoli, 2022