(VEE) BOOK ON ITALY'S UNKNOWN SOLDIER TO LAUNCH IN SAO PAULO

(VELINO) Roma, 3 Jun - The Brazilian edition of "The story (almost true) of the unknown soldier" by Emilio Franzina will be presented on June 15 at the Italian Institute of Culture (IIC) in Sao Paulo. The author, a historian by profession and a passionate storyteller, treads in these pages on the line between history and literature and, drawing on a myriad of authentic documents of the Great War, reconstructs the imaginary biography of the soldier who died in 1918 and was never identified. Putting together the pieces of a life lived scattered across a vast amount of letters, biographies and official reports collected through years of research, Franzina composes, like a jigsaw puzzle, the plausible, or nearly true, story of a combatant who experienced all the stages of Italy's war effort between 1915 and 1918. It is his body that was buried in the "Altare della Patria" ("Altar of the Fatherland") as an emblem in memory of all the war dead. It is from this symbolic place that the unknown soldier begins in these pages to narrate the story of his life in the first person, 100 years on. The event is part of the "Year of Italy in Latin America", sponsored by the Foreign Ministry in partnership with the Ministries of Culture and Tourism, Economic Development, the Italian Trade Agency (ICE), the Conference of Italian University Rectors and with the contribution of many companies. vel
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