Piedi freddi

This book is for us, born and raised in peace. For us, who are safe in our warm homes and watch war through our smartphone screens. It was when she saw the first images of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 that Francesca Melandri began to connect those events to others further back in time: the places where war between armies was returning to Europe for the first time in eighty years are the same places that marked the lives of her father and tens of thousands of our fathers and grandfathers forever, between 1942 and 1943, during the retreat from Russia. Thanks in part to a pair of valenki, the felt overshoes that prevented his feet from freezing, Franco Melandri was one of the lucky ones who managed to return from the Ukrainian steppes; and in the long life he was granted in peacetime, he tried several times to recount the immense tragedy in which he had taken part. In this book, his words resonate, but above all, it is his silences that speak to us, the opacity of a man who, like so many others of his generation, found himself fighting on the wrong side. This novel is thus both the journey of a writer in search of the truth about her father and a meditation on war, which today is once again lapping at the shores of Europe, forcing us to reflect on what the word “peace” really means. Moving back and forth in time, Francesca Melandri uncovers memories buried under the snow, connects them to events and faces of the present, and delves into our consciences with the power of literature. Piedi freddi is a book of great civic value, which in telling us about two wars tells us about every war, in retracing the destiny of one man outlines that of humanity as a whole, in evoking emotions it does not renounce reasoning, wanting to understand, finding the courage to take a stand.