History (novel)
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| Author | Elsa Morante |
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| Original title | La Storia |
| Translator | William Weaver |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Publisher | Giulio Einaudi Editore |
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Publication date
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1974 |
History: A Novel (Italian: La Storia) is a novel by Italian author Elsa Morante, generally regarded as her most famous and controversial work. Published in 1974, it narrates the story of a partly Jewish woman, Ida Ramundo, and her two sons Antonio (called "Nino") and Giuseppe ("Useppe") in Rome, during and immediately after the Second World War.
The Italian title "La Storia" can be translated as either "History" or "The Story"; the ambiguity is lost in translation.
Each of the novel's eight sections is prefaced by a precis of macro-historical events that actually took place in the year of the fictional Ramundos' life in the subsequent section, usually from an anarchist or Marxist perspective. The narrator frequently interrupts this fictional narrative to note how her own research verifies the subjective accounts of the characters; from these interruptions it is clear the narrator must be a character in the novel, but which character is never revealed.
Ida Ramundo's mother was secretly Jewish, but subject to epilepsy, bouts of violence, and paranoia, eventually drowning herself in a poorly-planned escape to Palestine when Mussolini's fascist race laws were announced. Ida acquired her mother's timidity thereafter, scarcely protesting when a young German soldier asks to come to her apartment, then rapes her in her teenage son's bed while she suffers an epileptic seizure in January 1941. This rape results in a pregnancy and another son, who is called Useppe (his own mispronunciation of his name) for the rest of the book. Her other son, Nino, becomes increasingly delinquent, and soon runs away from home first to join the army, then to join the resistance, only occasionally returning to visit his mother and half-brother. In early 1943, their apartment is bombed while Ida and Useppe are grocery shopping, killing their beloved dog Blitz, and forcing them to live in a refuge shelter with a huge extended family for the rest of the war. There they meet a man claiming to be a deserter named Carlo Vivaldi, but actually a Jewish anarchist philosopher/poet named Davide Segre. In October, Ida and Useppe witness the stock cars of people rounded up from the Jewish ghetto and being taken to concentration camps.
Though Nino is affectionate toward his undersized and precocious brother, his actions to him are not protective. He promises to visit frequently to bring money and toys while the family is starving physically and emotionally, but rarely does. During one of his infrequent visits, he takes him to his guerrilla camp for the day, where in the course of a few hours, the three-year-old Useppe watches Nino have sex with his girlfriend, participate in a raid that kills three German soldiers, and rides home on a pack mule that is also carrying a hidden cache of grenades. With the retreat of the Nazis in late 1944 and the arrival of American forces, the narrative shifts from emphasizing the physical dangers of war to the psychological dangers of the post-war period, as the characters are exposed to increasingly horrifying images and stories of atrocities in the papers, and half-Jewish Ida is nearly paralyzed by racial paranoia and survivor's guilt. Nino continues to violently oppose the new governments, and is eventually killed fleeing the police while smuggling illegal guns into the country.
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