Kate Elizabeth Willman,Unidentified Narrative Objects and the New Italian Epic

Reviewed by: Katja Liimatta, The University of Iowa, USA

Unidentified Narrative Objects and the New Italian Epic by Kate Elizabeth Willman is a project that provides an insightful and fascinating perspective on recent Italian literature. The term ‘Unidentified Narrative Object’ (UNO) was invented by Wu Ming 1 (Roberto Bui) to describe hybrid or mixed genre texts that are hard to categorize because the line between fiction and nonfiction is blurred. The essential features of the New Italian Epic (NIE) are the authors’ desire to effect change in society through literature and the belief in the value of re-assessing the past and the present in relation to one another.

In Chapter 1, “‘Something is Happening in Italian Literature’: The Memorandum on the New Italian Epic and Twenty-First-Century Italian Literature,” Willman takes a look at Wu Ming 1's document about the NIE, which serves as a starting point for her study on UNOs. Willman, however, points out that Wu Ming 1's document fails for example to discuss the influence of so-called migrant and Cannibal writers when discussing UNOs. Furthermore, Wu Ming 1 mostly excludes motherhood, female, postcolonial, and migrant experiences from NIE, privileging the portrayal of fatherhood.

Chapter 2, “ ‘We're Going to Have to Be the Parents': Exploring Parental Legacies and Taking Responsibility,” deals with the consequences of “la morte del Vecchio” and the presence of parental legacies in recent Italian literature. Willman explores issues related to fatherhood in Giuseppe Genna's Medium (published online in 2007) and Italia De Profundis (2008), which depict the death of his real father. However, as Willman explains: “Whilst Medium is an investigation into the past, Italia De Profundis is firmly situated in the present, as mourning his father leads Genna's textual avatar to reflect on the problems in both his own life and modern-day Italy” (p. 59). Another novel in which authority, the figure of “il Vecchio,” and generational issues are at the core is Nelle mani giuste (2007) by Giancarlo De Cataldo, who mixes fiction with history (like Manzoni in I Promessi sposi).

Willman correctly emphasizes that we should not forget the significance of motherhood and female perspectives, although many important Italian women writers are not included in the NIE, for example Elsa Ferrante. Although Laura Pugno's first novel Sirene (2007), a sci-fi or cli-fi (climate change fiction), has a dystopian setting, in a way it also depicts the reality of the present world and serves as a warning for the future. As Willman reminds us, we can clearly see racist and colonial undertones in the treatment of the mermaids—neither humans nor animals but hybrids. Besides parental legacies, the apocalyptic elements connect all the works analyzed by Willman in this chapter.

In Chapter 3, “On the Historical Novel,” Willman examines questions about history, historiography, and memory in some recent Italian works in order to discover how the novelists have used the historical novel form. The precursor to the new historical novels of the 20th century was, of course, Manzoni's I promessi sposi. As Willman correctly points out, “Many recent historical novels in Italian similarly centre on personal and individual story, or the stories of several individuals, in order to raise points about history and historiography” (p. 84). For example, in Una storia romantica (2007), Antonio Scurati depicts the Italian Risorgimento, using the past to reflect on the present.

Italian colonialism is the subject matter of Antar Mohamed and Wu Ming 2's Timira. Romanzo meticcio (2012), which portrays the life of a Somali-Italian woman while analyzing Italian colonial memory. Although the authors are male, besides employing a female character they use a “female voice” to represent traditionally marginalized and forgotten protagonists in the so-called official History. In Le rondini di Montecassino (2010), Helena Janeczek depicts the battle of Monte Cassino during the Second World War, while raising questions about historiography and memory. As Willman concludes:

We have seen that twenty-first century Italian historical novels have aimed to rethink both the remembered and the forgotten aspects of recent history, displaying a distrust of grand narratives, a desire to insert the personal into the collective, and a foregrounding of the ways in which we apprehend the past. (p. 110)

What is the “new realism”? In Chapter 4, “Literature of Experience: Representing Reality in the Digital Age,” Willman first examines the views of Donnarumma, Scurati, and Wu Ming, among others. She then analyzes works that can be considered representative of the “new realism” because the authors employ literary journalism in their writing. Combining literature with journalism, thus mixing fact with fiction, has become extremely popular in recent years in Italy. As Willman explains, these UNOs: “[…] explore interactions between reality and fiction, between testimony and journalism, between technology and tradition, and between different media” (p. 123). A good example is Roberto Saviano's bestseller Gomorra (2006) about the Mafia (Camorra) in Naples, which was also turned into a movie and a television series. In Gomorra, the first-person narrator Saviano includes autobiographical elements when describing mafia and the violence that affected his family. As Willman puts it, Gomorra provides “a hybrid reading experience” (p. 131).

This is also true of Babsi Jones's Sappiano le mie parole di sangue (2007), a work that reflects the letters she sent to her boss during the conflict between the Serbs and Albanians when she was a reporter in Kosovo. Because of its intertextuality and references to other types of media, it is a perfect example of a UNO. Roma negata (2014), written by an Italian-Somali woman, Igiaba Scego, also combines different modes of writing while raising awareness of the history of colonialism and migrants' problems today. Unfortunately, however, as Willman points out, “Scego is another author who is surprisingly absent from many discussions of the NIE, given that her hybrid texts address identity, the impact of recent history and the power of storytelling with a strong sense of impegno” (p. 140).

Willman is aware that her study of unidentified narrative objects is by no means complete. For example, she points out that she has left out queer perspectives from her analysis. She also stresses that UNOs are not restricted to literature, but include other art forms as well, such as cinema. She mentions the film director Nanni Moretti as a good example. In conclusion, Willman emphasizes the extreme importance of UNOs: “Combining different modes of writing and, in some cases, different media forms, they offer innovative approaches to coming to terms with the past and narrating experience in the contemporary world” (p. 152). Indeed, Willman has brilliantly succeeded in what she was trying to accomplish: to raise awareness of UNOs in Italian literature and culture in the 21st century.