First you look for the page on Google Maps: Southern tip of Italy. Boot heel. Salento region. The town of Pagliarano, the setting of Davide Morosinotto’s novel “The Pirates of Salento”, is of course not to be found. It’s made up. But you think you can feel the warmth of those five days just before the summer vacation on your skin, hear the chirping of the cicadas and smell the nearby sea. This and the widespread desire to be king or princess of an autonomous small state in the age of adventure arouse the curiosity of young readers.
Now all hopes of the family rest on converting the farm into a small country hotel.
Before the question “How do I behave as the ruler of a mini-state?” is Paolo, 13 years old, who lives with parents and grandfather on an old country estate. Casa Vulía is located on a hill not far from the coastal road, surrounded by an enchanting olive grove, in which there is also a long-abandoned shepherd’s hut. That sounds like idyll, but the parents have to struggle to renovate the dilapidated property after father lost his job in the factory. Now all hopes of the family rest on converting the farm into a small country hotel. But the mayor of the community seems to have dirty plans along with the factory owner. That is a narrative thread of the story. The second develops from Paolo’s find in the shepherd’s hut. He discovers a letter from his great, great, great, grandfather, a robber chief. After the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, Casa Vulía and the lands were declared an autonomous olive grove state. Paolo and his friends are fascinated by the proclamation. Since the young people are currently in a phase of rebellion and a thirst for adventure, they renew the manifesto with the proclamation of an autonomous children’s state. The founding act in the shepherd’s hut is filmed and immediately posted on the Internet. The response is overwhelming. And with that begins a political lesson that makes the founders of the state look like sorcerers’ apprentices who no longer control the spirits that they themselves called.
In this novel, again translated by Cornelia Panzacchi and published in Italy in 2011, Davide Morosinotto does not achieve the narrative density of his other novels, such as “The Mississippi Gang”. Despite the connection of the story with topics such as first love, trouble at school, quarrels with an opposing gang, despite the inclusion of the idyllic landscape of southern Italy, the figures look strangely wooden and not completely carved. As if their properties had been written on their bodies and did not arise out of themselves. The event, on the other hand, develops – told alternately from different perspectives – full of tension and variety. So in the end you would still like to sit with Paolo, Antonio and Laerte, with Bea and Elena in the shade of the ancient oak tree on the (real) road to Tricase Porto and listen to the cicadas. Because the “Oak of the Hundred Knights” really does exist.
Davide Morosinotto: The Salento Rebels. Translated from the Italian by Cornelia Panzacchi. Thienemann Verlag, 2021, 286 pages, 15 euros.