Discovery of the World: A Political Awakening in the Shadow of Mussolini

By Luciana Castellina

Luciana Castellina is one of Italy’s most prominent left intellectuals and a cofounder of the newspaper il manifesto. In this coming-of agememoir, based on her diaries, she recounts her political awakening as a teenage girl in Fascist Italy—where she used to play tennis with Mussolini’s daughter—and the subsequent downfall of the regime. Discovery of the World is about war, anti-Semitism, anti-fascism, resistance, the belief in social justice, the craving for experience, travel, political rallies, cinema, French intellectuals and FIAT workers, international diplomacy and friendship. All this is built on an intricate web made of reason and affection, of rational questioning and ironic self-narration as well as of profound nostalgia, disappointment and discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781781682876

Luciana Castellina

Luciana Castellina has been a leading figure of the Italian Left since the 1960s. She co-founded the Partito di Unit� Proletaria per il communismo (PdUP) and the Movimento dei Comunisti Unitari (CU). She was a member of the European parliament from 1979 to 1999 and has been at different times the editor of Nuovo Generazione, il manifesto and Liberazione.