Il mio primo dopoguerra

MASSIMO ZAMBONI :: IL MIO PRIMO DOPOGUERRA :: LIBRO :: MONDADORI :: 2005

Massimo Zamboni: ‘We marched with our white masks on, and the elastic band pulled at the nape of our necks. We followed the growth of Caesium, looking suspiciously at cows and bees, warding off the wind. On that first of May, we celebrated work while thinking of something else. When the nuclear fog finally clears, the physiognomy of the continent is revealed: from the Urals to Portugal, Europe is one, because of radiation. United, the Chernobyls.’

Berlin, Beirut, Mostar. Three cities among many that have experienced urban dismemberment. A grey, consistent borderline, the Wall. A green, unreal border, the Green Line. A blue, fast border, the Neretva River. Three cities, six banks: with no connections other than those of hatred. Three cities among the many devastated by war and frozen in fragile truces at the centre of this novel of thoughts; a book that recounts the possibility of living and finding oneself amidst the rubble in a pure state that dismays, in an illuminating encounter with essences.

In June 1998, CSI, of which Massimo Zamboni was guitarist, held two concerts in the Bosnian city of Mostar after an interminable series of vicissitudes and, above all, after an incredible tangle of political and ethnic problems. But this was not Zamboni’s first experience in the rubble of war-torn areas: like Mostar there had been Beirut and Berlin of the Wall. His ‘post-war’ memories are collected in this book, a diary that recounts the daily tragedy and hope of the most martyred places in the history of the last part of the 20th century.

REVIEW ::

MUCCHIO SELVAGGIO (Andrea Scanzi, September 2005) :: ‘With “Il mio primo dopoguerra” (My first post-war period), a resounding title in itself, Zamboni returns to looking backwards. He had already done so with ‘In Mongolia in retromarcia’ (In Mongolia In Reverse) (Giunti, 2001). Even now, the 48-year-old author from Reggio Emilia recounts his travels. In particular places. That ‘have had to experience human dismemberment’. Berlin 1981, Beirut 2001, Mostar 1998. When confronted with these spaces, reduced to rubble ‘and a pure stage that dismays’, Zamboni feels ‘a repulsive nostalgia for the peace that grips his soul’. The narration, dry and inspired, in the first person, is not chronological (it is Mostar that closes the tale). The result is a travelogue. Of war. And of memories that hurt the author, like the concerts with the C.S.I. in Slavic land, when the driver interrupted them and said ‘welcome to Mostar’. Welcome to hell. ‘welcome hellcome’. And this above all is, my first post-war. Successful review, and participatory radiography, of hells.’