Dandelions

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This shapeshifter has gone by many names: camp fever, ague, intermittent-, swamp- or marsh-fever. Until the turn of the twentieth century, when the female Anopheles mosquito was identified as the cause of infection, the marsh air itself—heavy with the smell of stagnant water and rotting vegetation—was assumed to be poisonous. Mala aria, bad air. Paludismo, swampism, or, I suppose, swampitis. I do always wonder about those shows about family history, like Who Do You Think You Are? I wonder how many celebrities they start looking into the family history of, but give up because they simply can’t find anything that’s going to make them cry on television. But let’s talk about your final book recommendation, which is Lea Ypi’s acclaimed Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. The Cazalet Chronicles, as a series of novels, moves through time, and so you see the family members in the round, how they fit into a timeline. You see them and their personalities in context. I mean, there are tragedies and, perhaps, minor acts of heroism, but they weren’t, you know, executed by the Fascists, or didn’t risk life and limb to smuggle messages to partisans. Stepanova’s family didn’t meet the tragedy that you could have thought they might during the Second World War, because they were Jewish and bourgeois: doctors, engineers and intellectuals. They survived more or less in one piece. She writes about how, when she was younger, this used to embarrass her. She used to find it kind of shameful to admit that her ancestors—how did she put it?—made no attempt to make themselves remotely interesting.

This charmingly candid account of the tensions between an English present and an Italian past is also a fascinating family saga, teeming with idiosyncratic life and bringing with it a chunk of history that still conditions both countries today.’ The dialogue in these books is incredible. Especially the children, she writes children’s dialogue so acutely, so well. But again, it’s the details, like Ginzburg. How people eat: whether someone passes the gravy or just pours it all onto their own plate. That can be as clear an indication of character as whether they were fascist or not, or whether they supported Chamberlain’s appeasement policy or not. The company's logo is a representation of the crucible – the creuset – in which all its cast-iron pots are conceived. Here, M Sallé explains, unfazed by the spitting lava behind him, 15 per cent pure pig iron is blended with 35 per cent recycled steel and 50 per cent iron, at a temperature of 1,500C for 40 minutes. If the consistency isn't perfect, subsequent enamelling will fail. The precision couldn't be further from Child's slapdashery. This idea of objective truth is impossible. There is no such thing. Memory is a construction, it’s a fiction” The bonifica delle paludi, I read, was not a success. Of the millions of hectares promised, only a fraction was delivered. There was not enough viable land for everyone, and what there was tended to be physically and economically exhausting to maintain. During the Second World War, channels were neglected again. Some, especially in the north, were a gift to retreating Weimar soldiers, who flooded them on purpose, surrounding the partigiani with filthy, malaria-infested waters. Much of the work of reclaiming the land then fell to future administrations or was abandoned altogether.I think it really captures that a family is a kind of microcosm of society as a whole—the struggles within the family between man and woman, body and mind, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, are the struggles that have shaped society and family for all of history. One thing that has changed recently is that the TLS has partnered with the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, to encourage and celebrate everyone’s hard work, and to throw a little bit of money into the mill – because you can’t over estimate the difference a couple of thousand pounds can make to a small press and its authors. 4. What do you look for in a good editor-author relationship? In Dandelions, her extraordinary debut, Thea Lenarduzzi pieces together her family history through four generations’ worth of migration between Italy and England, and the stories scattered like seeds along the way. After the spectacle of Piazzale Loreto in 1945, people moved on; the collective memory fragmented and so faded easily. Disease became confused with cure. Could it have been any other way? Fascism, fires, fevers: these things are more persistent than we tend to allow. More persistent than memory even, which distorts down the years, becoming discolored and fainter with every new generation.

After cooling, pieces are blasted with grit and then fettled, smoothing the edges. Though much is still done by hand, “robots” were introduced eight years ago. “It's tough work,” says M Sallé, “and we're in a state of permanent innovation.”Leo came earlier than planned, on a tourist visa, with one flimsy cardboard suitcase of belongings, like a shoddy theatre prop. ‘He didn’t listen when I told him to wait.’ Perhaps, after his brutti giri , he had convinced himself that Dirce was walking out on him. When she had been gone just a few weeks he had sent her a postcard from Maniago with a carefully staged ring of red wine across one corner. Would she have seen the funny side then as she does now? What was wrong with you when you couldn’t work all that time, after fainting?’ I ask her, looking up from the book. ‘Ah, nina, non mi ricordo. But during this time,’ she starts – ‘well, I’ll let you read it yourself.’

Since Roman times, the plan had been to drain the swamps, to render them inhabitable and agriculturally useful. But successes were few and short-lived. Some say the fall of the Roman Empire can be linked to a particularly bad outbreak of malaria, or “Roman Fever,” as it was then known. (I write this a few months after the Italian government collapsed in disagreement over how to handle our own pandemic; the country is now on its sixty-ninth government since the end of the Second World War.) Amy Newman’s translations of Antonia Pozzi’s poemsappear in the Spring 2018 issue ofExchanges : “Invitation.”Well, in terms of writing, it’s that thing: write what you know—or, as it often happens, think you know. Also, by writing about what’s close to you, that you see every day, and trying to see it differently. Tilting it slightly and seeing it from a different angle. Writing focuses you in a different way.