“I’m thirty years old, I’m the soldier of an invisible war.”
A coming-of-age story, a family chronicle, and a political manifesto.
Marco’s account of his first thirty years holds together the story of a “lost generation” and that of the twentieth century, to which we all belong. He has much to say about his battle, the same as many of his peers. The feeling of not finding a place in his own family, with a partisan great-grandfather and two grandfathers: one a convinced communist and the other a devoted teacher. His two grandmothers also seem to have had a role in their own communities, one being a woman of faith and the other a medical doctor. Marco’s parents were activists in 1968 and after, then took shelter in the woods for a while and later in a cult. The list of armies is complete, going back three generations from his. And what about Marco? “I was born in a time of war disguised as a time of peace. When I say ‘we’ I don’t know who ‘we’ is. We are a multitude of solitudes. There is nothing we can change.” But maybe there is. This story shows that there is always a place to go. Something that changes. Even when there is fog outside and no one shows you the way. Life runs and calls, we must know how to listen.
Concita De Gregorio
Concita De Gregorio
Concita De Gregorio
A journalist and a writer, Concita De Gregorio has been writing for la Repubblica for many years, and now she writes the column Invece Concita. She also has a column on the weekly magazine D. She has been the editor of l’Unità from 2008 to 2011. She started the online project Cosa pensano le ragazze, which ran on Repubblica.it from the 8th of March 2016 to the 8th of March 2017. She hosted the Rai 3 television program Pane quotidiano, created and hosted FuoriRoma (Rai 3) and hosted the 2017 daily reports Da Venezia è tutto from Venice Film Festival. On Radio Capital she has been author and host of Cactus – Basta poca acqua, winner of Diversity Media Award 2019.
She published Non lavate questo sangue (2001), Una madre lo sa (2006), Malamore (2008), Un paese senza tempo (2010), Così è la vita (2011), Io vi maledico (2013), Un giorno sull’isola (2014), Mi sa che fuori è primavera (2015, Premio Ninfa Galatea, Premio Brancati), that in 2017 was adapted for the theatre and acted by Gaia Saitta and directed by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Cosa pensano le ragazze (2016), that inspired the docu-film Lievito madre (2017), signed with Esmeralda Calabria, Non chiedermi quando (2016), Chi sono io? (2017), Princesa e altre regine (2018), Nella notte (2019), In tempo di guerra (2019) and Lettera a una ragazza del futuro (2021). She wrote a monologue for the photography book Prima, donna (2020) by Margaret Bourke-White. Her most recent book is Un’ultima cosa (2022).
In 2019 she won Premio Arrigo Benedetti for journalism and Premio Legalitria.
- In tempo di guerra (During Wartime)
- Cosa pensano le ragazze (What Girls Think)
- Mi sa che fuori è primavera (I Think It’s Spring Outside)
In tempo di guerra, a selected press review (PDF)
Video
Concita De Gregorio on Repubblica Tv
Concita De Gregorio on Che tempo che fa
