Book
The Italian Wife
First published 2015
Italy, 1932. Architect Isabella Berotti is drawn into a mystery when a stranger leaves a young girl in her care and then kills herself from a town clock tower. Isabella's attempt to protect the child forces her to examine secrets in her own past and brings her into conflict with officials whose authority depends on the expanding power of Mussolini's Fascist state.
With photographer Roberto Falco, Isabella follows the mystery from provincial streets and marble piazzas towards Rome, uncovering corruption and political danger as she goes. The novel places its private investigation inside the culture of Fascist Italy, where public spectacle, state power and fear increasingly shape ordinary choices, and where Benito Mussolini himself becomes part of the threat confronting the protagonists.
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