The malnata

Author:
Beatrice Salvioni
Publishing house:
Einaudi Stile Libero
Publication date:
21-03-2023

Only the strength of an unbreakable friendship can drive two young girls to rebel against injustice. Especially in the narrow conformity of Fascist Italy.

A teenage outcast, and a peer who gets to know her for real, beyond prejudice. And that thanks to her she finds the courage to make her voice, her truth, heard. An engaging coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of a Po Valley province oppressed by the control, sexism and violence of the Ventennio.

Beatrice Salvioni’s debut enchanted publishers around the world. It is being released simultaneously with the Italian edition in France, Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Bulgaria, and soon the United States and Germany. It is being translated into 32 languages.

“Malnata emerges from the pages so vividly that you feel like you can touch her. He is a character that every publisher would like to have in his catalog.”- Anne Michel, Albin Michel, France

“Beatrice Salvioni is an absolute literary revelation. She is reminiscent of authors like Elena Ferrante and Joyce Carol Oates.” -Maria Fasce, Lumen, Spain

Monza, March 1936: on the banks of the Lambro, two young girls try to hide the corpse of a man who has pinned on his shirt a pin with the fascio and the tricolor. They are shocked and half-disheveled. It is Francesca who tells firsthand the story that led them there. A respectable 12-year-old from a middle-class family, she spies from the bridge every day on a girl playing together with boys in the river, her bare feet and skirt raised, her legs scratched and muddy. She dreams of becoming her friend, despite the fact that everyone in town considers her a curse thrower and despises her by calling her Malnata. But that determined air of hers, the air of someone who is not afraid of anything, fascinates her. It will be the theft of cherries, her first lie, that will make them friends. Against the backdrop of the Abyssinian War, the pain of loss, and the upheavals of adolescence, Francesca learns with her to denounce the overpowering and abuse of power, especially male power, despite the community’s disapproval.