La Grande A

In the late 1930s in Fascist Italy, just before the war, a young mother named Adi leaves her children behind with their aunt and uncle in Lombardy, in the north of Italy. Adi travels to Eritrea in East Africa to open a cafè and to work odd jobs such as truck deliveries and car rentals. Young Giada feels abandoned and dreams of traveling to Africa to be with her mother; only after the war has ended will this become possible. When Giada finally arrives in Africa she discovers that life in Assab is not the fairy tale she had imagined. She encounters many different characters, including Hammed, a boy whom she teaches how to write; Orlando, her mother’s beau and a dyed-in-the-wool Fascist; and Checco, a wild gazelle that she raises at home. Giada’s true story begins when she meets Giacomo Colgada, a brilliant young man: in her relationship she will search constantly for love and for approval as a wife and mother, even as she battles with her mother’s difficult personality. Her life in Eritrea stretches through the 1950s and 60s and she witnesses many events, from the provincialism of the ex-colonials to the first coup d’état of Hailé Selassié. In an adventurous life, lived between Italy, Eritrea, and Ethiopia she faces much turbulence and difficulty, but in the end Giada will prevail.