Dacia Maraini - Rabolt szerelem

Marina often visits the emergency room. Every time he is covered in blue-green spots and bruises, but he always claims that he just fell down the stairs. He lives in a ground-floor apartment, where there are no stairs. Her father idolizes the wonderfully beautiful little Venice with golden curls and blue eyes, he wants his daughter to rule as a queen in the world of fashion. He turns her into a child model with false eyelashes and a lipsticked mouth, exposing her to the perverse gaze and desires of men. Giorgia misses her train, even though she has to get to Seville, to her husband, at all costs that day. So she happily accepts the offer of a confident-looking man in a railway uniform: he then takes her in his car to a nearby station, where she can still reach the connection. When the young woman gets into the pitch-black van, she has no idea what awaits her. Angela finds it increasingly difficult to tolerate her friend's jealousy and constant suspicion. Yet he is unable to break up with her once and for all, and looks for the fault in himself: is it possible that somewhere in the depths of his soul he is still guilty?
Women are the focus of Dacia Maraini's book of stories by today's great lady of Italian literature. Barely adolescent, inexperienced, gullible children, sensitive young women longing for love and therefore perhaps too giving. Seemingly fragile and vulnerable, their partners - husbands and lovers - believe that they can take what they think is their right, even by force. They confuse passion with possession, they do not want to love, but to subjugate and appropriate the other. But Maraini's saddened and humiliated heroines are strong even in their fallibility, they struggle, and sometimes they lose and fail, but they don't give up. As it happens, it is too late, there is no escape, no resurrection.

In these disturbing and heartbreaking stories, Dacia Maraini examines one of the most controversial and painful topics of our time, violence against women. In its seemingly objective, almost dispassionately presented stories, the book draws the anatomy of violence with eerie, razor-sharp precision, analyzes the often contradictory and complicated emotional relationship between perpetrator and victim, and paints an authentic picture of the sometimes indifferent, sometimes hostile social environment, which is not to be revealed, but to be hidden trying to cause trouble. The volume is a vision, a cry for help and a call to the world at the same time. But above all, it's a poignant read.

DACIA MARAINI is one of the most respected and prolific authors of contemporary Italian literature, an important cultural and public figure. He creates in almost every genre: poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages. He started his career as a journalist, the daily Corriere della Sera published his writings. His first novel was published in 1962. He won the prestigious Campiello Prize in 1990 with his novel The Long Life of Marianna Ucría, also published in Hungarian, and in 1999 he was awarded the Strega Prize for his short story collection Buio (Darkness). His novel Végállómás Budapest, published in 2008, was published by Jaffa Kiadó in 2019.