La sonnambula

Rarely does one’s destiny reveal itself from childhood: yet this is precisely what happens to the protagonist of this novel, who, ever since she was a child, has been prone to sudden fainting spells from which she awakens with a premonition of a future event. Her parents try to keep this gift of hers hidden and hope that a good marriage might keep her safe: yet it is precisely that marriage that proves to be the most dangerous place for her, forcing her to flee as far away as she can to rebuild her life relying solely on her own strength. Thus begins, in a town in Sardinia, the adventure of Ofelia Rossi, the ‘renowned somnambulist’, a solitary and proud woman who, in her parlour on Via del Fiore Rosso, earns a living by offering prophecies for the price of 5 lire. Her clients are mostly ladies harbouring anxieties and desires in their hearts, either for themselves or for those they love. The sleepwalker encourages them to speak, knows how to listen, then feigns a trance, takes up a quill pen and writes her response. Until events begin to unfold that even escape her skilful control, and the past comes knocking at her door once more… Drawing inspiration from a late-nineteenth-century newspaper clipping, Bianca Pitzorno plays with the archetypes of the adventure and romance novel, dipping her pen into the Gothic and the picaresque to write a novel teeming with life, at once dreamlike, ironic and political. Haunted by mysterious visions, the sleepwalker is at the same time free from all superstition, capable of facing her destiny as a lone woman in a hostile world with dignity and courage. Through her extraordinary adventure, Bianca Pitzorno celebrates the power of the human mind and reminds us that, thanks to our fortitude, rationality and imagination, it is we who write our own lives.