Return to Trieste

All her life Alma has been running from painful memories, from people, and from herself. But her father’s death forces her to return to Trieste for three short days—the city of her childhood and youth. He left her a comment, a postscript, something more than just an inheritance. During this journey, Alma recalls the eclectic mosaic of her past: her grandparents—intellectuals, carriers of Austro-Hungarian culture; her mother, who helped the mentally ill together with reformer Franco Basaleya; her father, who belonged to Marshal Tito’s narrow circle; and Vili, the son of the family’s Serbian friends. Most of all, Alma fears meeting him—her former friend, lover, and now enemy. But a meeting with Vili is inevitable: he will deliver to her her father’s farewell message. Federica Mandzoni skillfully explores themes of identity, memory, and history against the backdrop of a painful transition from a unified Yugoslavia to the formation of the Serbian and Croatian republics. Trieste, with its unique atmosphere of a border city, becomes a starting point for reflections on how to gather the scattered parts of the soul into one and find the way home.