LA DONNA DAL CAPPOTTO VERDE

Edith Bruck questions the theme of memory and testimony, but also the dilemma between the resentment of remembrance and the relief of forgiveness.

Lea Linder, a writer and translator in a crisis of inspiration, lives in Rome with her husband, a reclusive poet. Their quiet existence is shattered by a chance encounter. Standing in line at the bakery, Lea is approached by an elderly woman who recognises her as "little Lea from Auschwitz" and then quickly disappears among the passers-by, almost as insubstantial as her appearance. Shaken by such a vision, Lea tries to reconstruct her identity: was she just a fellow sufferer in the camp, or perhaps a Kapo? And what does she want now? From that moment on, the desire to find this woman, to confront her and heal the wound of that encounter, becomes an obsession for Lea. Born into a poor, large Jewish family, in 1944 Edith Bruck was taken to the ghetto in the capital and from there to Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. Having survived deportation, after years of pilgrimage, she finally arrives in Italy. In 1962 she published Andremo in città, a collection of short stories, from which her husband Nelo Risi made the film of the same name. In her works she was a witness to the dark events of the XXth century. She has won many literary prizes including Campiello Prize for lifetime achievement in 2023. Il pane perduto (La nave di Teseo, 2021) has been translated into several languages.