The drama of the Istrian exodus and the postwar refugee camps in Trieste arrives in novel form in the United States. "Her Name That Day," the English translation of Pietro Spirito's novel "Il suo nome quel giorno," which Marsilio published in Italy in 2018, is out now in the US.
"Her Name That Day" was published by Rutgers University Press (New Jersey), in a translation by Melinda Nelson and Charles Klopp. The book features a preface by Pamela Ballinger and an introduction written by Charles Klopp himself.
The novel is inspired by real events and tells the story of Giuliana Striano, a forty-year-old woman living in Cape Town, South Africa, who one day in the year 2000, upon the death of her mother, discovers she was adopted. Not only that: she also discovers she has a different identity, namely another name, another date and a different place of birth. In reality her name is Giulia, and she was born in northern Italy, in Trieste, though who her biological parents are remains unknown. Nothing is known about her childhood or her past in general. The protagonist then begins a complex search to discover who she truly is; an investigation that will take her to Trieste, where she will manage to identify and meet her biological mother. It is a kind of dramatic journey that will bring to light a tragic period in the northeastern regions of Italy: the long and painful postwar years, the exodus of populations from the lands ceded to Yugoslavia, the terrible violence along the border, and the harsh reality of refugee camps inhabited for decades by displaced people who had lost everything.
"In his novel," notes Pamela Ballinger in the preface, "Pietro Spirito turns his 'magic mirror' on the Venezia Giulia region to unite past and present, thus bringing to light the multiple shipwrecks caused by the twentieth century: wars, changes of regime, uprootings and violence."
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