Sagapò e Soldatesse: la Grecia degli invasori

Abstract

Among the many authors who covered the Italian military occupation of Greece (1940-1943), Renzo Biasion and Ugo Pirro still stand out as being the most influential. Their books, halfway between memoir and fiction, tell the stories of soldiers living their youth in a dreamy yet dangerous world, where all men have been deported as war prisoners, and everyday products such as gasoline display Homer’s alfabet. The antifascism of Sagapò (1953), which inspired the Academy Award-winning film Mediterraneo (1991), and Le soldatesse (1956) lays therefore in the rediscovery of a common heritage, both ancient and modern.