Novel Des orties et des hommes Paola Pigani (2019)

Pia’s childhood was spent running around in the shade of the trees, listening to the river rumble, picking grass from the ditches. Watching intensely the work of the men in the rhythm of the seasons, helping the parents in the fields to repay the loan from the Crédit Agricole. Belonging to a lively sibling group and guessing from the Italian words of the adults that the family has roots elsewhere than here, in this small hamlet in the Charente. A whole world, both immense and tiny, that Pia will have to leave for the grey walls of the boarding school. And as the 1970’s pass by, her eyes sharpen and her own voice comes to the fore to tell the story of the harshness of this country brought to its knees by a terrible drought, where the farms are depopulating, where anger and death lie in wait. A land that one never quite leaves.