Il velo strappato. Tormenti di una monaca napoletana

It is 1840, Enrichetta is nineteen years old and has recently lost her father, Don Fabio Caracciolo, marshal of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in Reggio Calabria, the last son of the Prince of Forino. She is young, noble and in love with Domenico. But his family does not approve of the union. Yes, Enrichetta boasts illustrious ancestry, but she lacks financial solidity and the marriage is not to be. So her mother, tired of her daughter’s rebellious character and her propensity to choose the wrong men, makes a decisive decision: Enrichetta will enter the convent of San Gregorio Armeno in Naples and stay there until the family’s financial situation is resolved. The young girl’s protests are of no use: the months in there become years and she is forced to take vows. The constriction makes her ill, Enrichetta wants to defy the laws of the Church and become free again, but even pleas addressed to Pope Pius IX are rejected. Yet nothing can extinguish the passion that moves her soul. A passion that soon becomes political and leads her to espouse the cause of the revolution against the Bourbons, of the dream of a new homeland: Italy.Brunella Schisa returns to recount her native city, Naples, through an extraordinary heroine, Enrichetta Caracciolo di Forino, nun, ante litteram feminist, Risorgimento patriot, author of the nineteenth-century bestseller Listeri del chiostro napoletano (Mysteries of the Neapolitan Cloister), from which Schisa bases her novel.Il velo strappato draws in and moves the reader, who, through the motions of an exceptional woman’s heart, relives an unforgettable existence and participates in a great struggle for freedom. Once again, Brunella Schisa confirms herself as one of Italy’s greatest authors of historical novels.