“A Socialist Love” arrives in bookshops for Neri Pozza, the first novel by journalist Pierfrancesco De Robertis, focused on the story of love and political passion between Anna Kuliscioff and Filippo Turati and out on 17 October.
The story opens with the image of a young woman getting off a third-class carriage on a February afternoon in 1884. It is her first time in Naples. Anna Kuliscioff has just arrived from her native land, Russia, having fled from the destiny written in her family’s name and wealth, but also from the attention of the tsarist police, who do not like free spirits. After a period spent in Switzerland and France, joining the anarchists and their yearnings for revolution, he arrives in Italy to study medicine, finally managing to realize his lifelong dream.
Bold and upright, also a loving mother of a three-year-old girl, Anna experiences the most precious gift of her existence when she meets Filippo Turati, a Milanese lawyer from a good family and a young intellectual already affected by the great problems of his time. Theirs is the story of an encounter that immediately becomes a tender and passionate love, destined to last a lifetime.
The “irreconcilable differences” between the two, as the author calls them, do not affect the profound understanding of two kindred souls, who share ideals and battles. In an Italy that does not give women the right to vote and does not allow them to enter Parliament, Anna finds her voice in the “doctor of the poor”. With Turati and a group of companions he founded the Italian Socialist Party in 1892, helping to give shape to a social justice project destined to make history.
Who is Pierfrancesco De Robertis
Pierfrancesco De Robertis, born in Arezzo in 1965, is a journalist and was the director of La Nazione di Firenze. He writes for various national newspapers, including uisjournal.com. A Socialist Love is his first novel.
