Gli uomini pesce

Winter 1944. Two young antifascists flee from Ferrara, where the Resistance is crushed in blood, and they head east. The guerilla is still possible in the sprawling marshes near the seashore. It is the beginning of a hectic journey full of baffling mysteries that will be revealed, almost eighty years later, in a Delta devastated by drought.
In the valleys between Argenta and Comacchio, the partisans Ilario Nevi and Erminio Squarzanti (the latter is also the protagonist of La macchina del vento) come across a dark legend, which takes hold of them: the story of the mysterious “fish people”. They follow it until the delta of the Po River, slipping into a horrific and disturbing dimension. After the war, they return home shattered, carrying with them traumas and secrets.
In 2022, Antonia (Ilario’s niece) finds out that she has inherited a house, a plot of land in the Po Delta, and an unpublished memoir about the events between 1944 and 1945. Therein lies the key to understand who the last partisan from Ferrara really was. Antonia decides to investigate. She owes it to her uncle, whom she loved and admired, and to herself. Her husband, the musician Arne Gustavsson (known as SonicAlly), helps her out in the investigation.
A novel set in the lowlands of the Lower Po Valley, between war, the climate crisis, post-Covid wounds, and memory convulsions.