The Ides of March (Idi di marzo) - Valerio Massimo Manfredi

I knew about the topic of this book from my high school years. I don’t know how many times I had to translate some of Caesar’s and Cicero’s passages as part of my Latin classes. Yet, reading Valerio Massdimo Manfredi’s version of the events that lead to Caesar’s assassination - enriched by details, characters’ insights and cultural references - was a real pleasure.
As usual, Manfredi’s books combine the competence of an expert and the skills of a talented novelist. A good way to learn history, especially if you are not keen on reading specialized textbooks.
The story: Caius Julius Caesar has recently pacified the state.

Theorem (Teorema) - Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this book and directed a movie with the same title. However neither the movie is based on the book nor the other way around. They were written at the same time: two sides of the same coin, or - like the author himself likes to say - two plates of the same diptych. Was Pasolini a genius, you might be wondering? Oh yeah, he was.
This is a very unorthodox book. Is it a story? Well, yeah, but…Is it prose? Well, yeah, but…Is there a timeline? Well, yeah, but…Is there a location? Well, yeah, but…

Confessions of a citizen (Egy polgár vallomásai) - Sándor Márai

Some chapters of this book read like an autobiography, others like a travel diary. And yet, the whole work is probably neither. It starts with the author's upbringing in a Magyar hometown, before WWI put an end to the Austro-Hungarian empire. After that Sándor Márai started to travel abroad. This is a summary of those years: a collection of impressions, experiences and encounters of a clever, refined, erudite and restless young man, moving around Europe between the two world wars. Tension is in the air. Excitement, desperation and extravagance as well.

Alexander, trilogy (1. Child of a dream, 2. The sands of Ammon, 3. The ends of the earth) - Valerio Massimo Manfredi

This trilogy is about the life of Alexander the Great - son of Philip II, king of Macedonia - who became the chief of the largest empire of the world when he was just 30.
Alexander spent the first years of his life in Macedonia, trained by his father’s officers and the great Greek philosopher Aristotle. He then joined his father’s army as the commander of the cavalry special corps. After his father’s death he was crowned king and promptly started a military campaign that would first lead him to control the whole of the Ancient Greek world, and eventually the Persian empire, including Egypt, Central Asia and the western part of the Indian subcontinent.

Hitler - Johann Chapoutot, Christian Ingrao

We all somehow have the impression that we know a lot about Adolf Hitler as a historical figure. Even those who haven’t read any books about Nazism or WWII have surely watched at least a documentary or a couple of war movies on those topics.
Yet, it turns out that most of the common ideas about this famous character are at the very least overestimated, at times even outright wrong. His fame as an evil genius is usually blown out of proportion (as far as the “genius” part of the expression is concerned), and his assumed fame as a great military tactician is as far from reality as it can possibly be.

Esperanto - Rodrigo Fresán

 

Esperanto is the name of a language that its creator thought could be used by everyone, but that it actually isn’t used by anyone. And it is also the name of this novel’s main character. Esperanto is a 35-year-old troubled musician, who hasn’t written a song for a long time. A friend of his and her baby went desaparecidos during the Argentina military junta era, while the baby’s father, a revolutionary fighter, was killed in action. A few years after that tragic day Esperanto was somehow considered responsible for his own child’s death and the resulting mental breakdown of his partner.

1914 - Luciano Canfora

This is a brief essay about the sequence of events that, over the course of a few weeks, triggered what has come to be known as The Great War or World War I. The year is 1914. Europe has enjoyed almost fifty year of peace, marked by economic growth, scientific and technological progress and social reforms. There still are some unresolved issues, neglected tensions and unsatiated appetites in the air though, and the situation will come to a critical point in the summer of that year.