Petra Reski: All’Italiana!

In the organizer's words:

How I tried to become Italian

Laconic, witty and politically accurate: a brilliant portrait of Italy as a country of longing

Petra Reski, the award-winning author and reporter, tells a story of development in her book - that of Italy since 1989 and her own. She has lived in Italy since 1991. With a sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, but always enlightening book about Italy, she follows up the great success of her Venice book - "Als ich einmal in den Canal Grande fiel. Life in Venice" - she continues the series.

"I describe Italy from the perspective of a non-Italian: as a German, I experience Italy's seemingly confusing political development not from a distance, but up close."

In her political non-fiction book, journalist Petra Reski reports

• from courtrooms,
• from prisons
• from petrochemical plants
• from palazzi
• from dried-up olive groves
• from ancient ruins
• from railroad compartments
• from sacristies
• from the sofas of the escorts
• and not least from the dining tables

Petra Reski, like few Germans, took her love for Italy seriously and married an Italian. She has experienced and shared Italy's political and cultural struggles . Now she wanted to be more than just a spectator and became Italian, partly so that she could vote in Italy.

Petra Reski spent years dealing with the Italian bureaucracy . Her struggle for citizenship is representative of her preoccupation and identification with the Germans' country of longing. After all, hardly any other nation is linked to Germany through its history and stories in as many ways as Italy.