Padre terra

When Giovanni is born, the arms that welcome him are those of his father, Primo, for his mother has died at the end of an exhausting labor. In the small community of the Polesine where the child grows up, everyone is certain that the tragedy was caused by the potions of the Botanica, a healer whom his parents had turned to—against the laws of nature—to conceive the long-desired child.

Primo loves Giovanni with a tender, attentive affection, caring for him and teaching him to feel the pulse of nature and listen to the voices of all living beings around them. In a landscape reminiscent of magical-realist atmospheres, the boy grows up with a special sensitivity that allows him to perceive the suffering buzz of wasps, the plea of a geranium about to be cut, the prayer of a hare that, standing upright, freezes in confusion before the barrel of the gun aimed at it.

When, at thirteen, Giovanni is finally given the chance to slaughter the family’s pig—his entry into the community of adults and the moment that could silence the village gossip—it is the animal’s strangled cry that stops his hand. Primo is accused of having failed to raise his son properly and feels responsible for the boy’s marginalization, while Giovanni instead draws from that moment a vision of the man he wants to become.

Padre terra is a novel that moves between the search for a renewed sense of fatherhood and the desire to listen to nature with a sensitivity capable of challenging ancient taboos and long-held traditions.