La parte sbagliata

What drives a young man from a good family, with no particular trauma behind him, to choose the path of political extremism? We are in the 2000s, not the 1970s: Ettore, the protagonist of La parte sbagliata (The Wrong Side), has left the suburbs and arrived in the city to enrol in a prestigious high school in the centre. He finds himself without any points of reference, lost, especially on a human level, in a place and a community where he cannot find any friends or points of reference. He soon finds them in a neo-fascist group, first by chance, then cultivating his own radicalisation, detaching himself from his family and friends, until an inevitable and tragic end. It is a novel about a misguided education, a climax not so much – not only – of violence, but also of bonds that are forged, others that are frayed, and above all of the construction of an identity. At the same time, it is an intimate confession, both tender and painful, of the emotional disorientation we all have to deal with during adolescence, and a journey into the attraction that evil always exerts.