I’ve been reading the new translation of Giorgio De Maria’s The Twenty Days of Turin, and since I feel I know almost nothing of Italy, I’ve been looking things up. So here is a collection of things I’ve found, with minimal explanation.
The cover of the Italian edition
Turin is home to the Museo Egizio, the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Egypt
Sculptor Vincenzo Vela is brought up. More on him here
The book refers to Edmondo de Amicis and his book Cuore, or The Heart of a Boy
The bas-relief behind the monument
The concept of The Library and what the mayor had to say about it makes me think of Claudius
The Albertine Statute was Italy’s first constitution
I hadn’t thought about the time setting of the story until it talked about the hippie era as being “thirty years ago.” That puts it in the 90s, the end of the century, as the subtitle puts it. I guess I took it for granted the story was in the end of the 70s, when the book was published.
The Monument to Niccolò Tommaseo is apparently known as “the book-shitter.”
Sister Clotilde gets her name from an early saint “venerated as guarding … those who suffered violent death and ill-tempered husbands.”
That leaves me about halfway through. I should have more to come.
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