An extreme drought, which has lasted for years and takes away the crops, the work of a lifetime, reason. The rain no longer blesses the crops and the rainfall has become unpredictable and violent. In the small Oltrepò Pavese town where Andrea lives, the life of those who cultivate the land is increasingly difficult, a hailstorm is enough to lose months' work in a few hours. The earth hides its resources deeply and so wild animals also begin to exhibit strange behaviors, they dig where they have never done before, they wander where they were previously absent. Andrea knows that the best thing would be to leave, as many do, even if his roots are in the town; but at the same time he is fascinated by the mysteries of nature and by the archaic ferocity of his father and uncle, poachers who allow him to follow them into the woods at night. Day after day, however, drought takes everything away, in a crescendo of events and omens that intertwine the fate of men with that of animals. So for the protagonist of this novel and for a little fox it will be a summer of growth, pain and loss…
A painful tale of Italy that is and will be, La drought (Bompiani, 2023, Euro 17.00, pp. 192. Also Ebook) is a current and intense novel, capable of evoking the narrative suggestion of life in rural villages and the people who live there and to grasp the epiphanies that each season reserves for those who cross it.
We ask the author, Guido Conti, what does drought represent in his novel? Is it just a natural phenomenon or is it something more?
“Droughts, like floods or floods, which I have written about over the years, are extreme phenomena that confront man with his destiny. Nature is not often a friend, it unleashes violence and its destructive force in an uncontrollable way. In those moments we feel all our impotence and our fragility. We would like to dominate nature and instead, in this continuous struggle, we are often victims. We do not accept that nature dominates us and is beyond our control, as happens with wild animals that enter our cultivated fields or cities. The drought therefore becomes an extreme theater where the characters move around experiencing conflicts”.
Why can't Andrea leave his small town in Oltrepò?
“Drought is first and foremost a bildungsroman in which various themes are touched upon, in my opinion decided today. Someone rightly called it a social novel. Between economic crises and environmental crises, which are often connected, there is also talk of continuing to work in a small family business, which are the ones most exposed to crises and difficulties. Andrea struggles with staying, facing the difficulties of living and carrying on the small company, or leaving and finding a job elsewhere, more secure. Then there is the uncle who will choose a different path. The novel opens up problems but does not give answers. I believe that the strength of storytelling lies right here”.
What do the characters of Andrea's father and uncle represent?
“Andrea's father is a hard man, who has a sacred relationship with the earth, he is a man who has never caressed his son. Andrea, who lives a complex adolescence, between tenderness, discoveries and even gratuitous cruelty, observes the world of adults. His father and uncle are poachers and he would like to be and not be like them. He lives hunting in the woods but with contradictory feelings. The father represents the land, the uncle, on the other hand, makes a different choice and renounces the land. Andrea is poised between these different attitudes that are never definitive and experiences them with great discomfort".
Is it possible to find a remedy, a way to go on even in a world dominated by drought?
“The earth is sacred and must not be violated but respected, otherwise we will all pay the consequences, both in terms of drought or, as happened in Romagna, floods. These are swampy areas below sea level, which we have reclaimed and they are rich lands. The relationship with water must find its balance throughout the Po Valley (and beyond), a harmony that has been lost since the 1950s. I wrote that if the Po dies, the whole plain dies. And unfortunately it will. The earth is sacred and must be respected in all its elements, otherwise the earth becomes a landfill, (see the land of fires), where the future and the health of children and grandchildren are undermined without any moral scruple. The same goes for water and air. The Aboriginal people of Australia understood that there was a need to respect the earth as a sacred goddess. We, in the name of profit and unscrupulous capitalism, have forgotten it”.
