Andrea Amedeo Sammartano,Festa Grande alla Dahra.

Reviewed by: Rosario Pollicino, University of Connecticut, USA

With his first novel, Festa Grande alla Dahra, published in Italy in May 2012, Andrea Amedeo Sammartano, born in Tripoli, Libya, tells the history and story of Italian communities who were repatriated from Libya in 1970. 2011 was, actually, not only the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy but also the 100th year since the beginning of the Italian colonization of Libya. This fascinating novel is set during a particular period, one often neglected by scholars, in the relationship between Italy and Libya: the postcolonial period. During this time, many Italians who had been in the North African country since the beginning of colonization chose to stay in Libya rather than go back to Italy. The reason for such a choice was largely because Italians found themselves becoming and feeling, little by little, like real Libyan citizens, like the author of this novel, who took this idea of adopted citizenship even further.

It should be noted that the author’s mother was born in Libya to Italian parents, while his father had moved to Libya from the small Italian island of Pantelleria when he was only 2 years old. These are the same origins as Amedeo, the main character of the novel, who bears the middle name of the author in an attempt to underscore the latter’s relationship to his protagonist. Through the witty Amedeo, but also through many of the other significant characters, the reader is not only drawn inside the multiracial and multicultural society that was present at the time in Libya, but also its inner processes. All citizens of postcolonial Libya, like Amedeo, had to negotiate in order to redefine their identities, which were not strictly related to the name of the country on their passports.

The voice of the narrator recounts the story of Amedeo and all the other characters in such an amiable way that he gives the impression of wanting to share an intimate story with someone he trusts: namely, the reader. The result is a detailed reconstruction that relates every aspect of the young protagonist’s inner experience, from the early feelings of love to the change of his own awareness through the intensification of the political commitment dictated by demands for social justice and support for the cause of ‘Libya’, up to his self-affirmation in the adult world. At times, the story indeed has this intimate characteristic because the novel describes the deep sentiments felt by Amedeo and other important characters. The reader is brought back to familiar feelings and sensations which he/she has probably felt before but, due to today’s frenetic life, has hardly noticed or has easily forgotten.

Other characters in the novel include Nuri and Leila, a brother and a sister who are Italian through their mother and Libyan through their father. Their physical features reveal their Libyan origins and Amedeo begins to have a close relationship with both of them. If Luciano, Amedeo’s neighbour, represents the best friend, raised in the same area in Tripoli and coming from the same cultural background, then Nuri represents instead a more mature friendship. The nearly-adult Amedeo chooses him as his very good friend for more serious reasons, such as the political philosophy they share. Leila represents the discovery for Amedeo of what love is from all possible perspectives, which are described with such elegance that the reader feels the strength of love not only towards Leila but towards Libya as a whole.

Nuri and Leila, therefore, represent much more than true friendship and true love for Amedeo. Friendship represents the relationship with the multicultural community that populated the ex-colony, while love is something beyond his control which keeps Amedeo, and the writer, deeply attached to his land. This is how Amedeo himself explains it to Leila: ‘Io sono italiano solo sulla carta, nell’intimo mi sento, in un certo senso, più libico di te e comunque soffocato come italiano e come libico!’ (‘I am Italian only on paper, inside I feel, in a certain sense, more Libyan than you and therefore stifled as both Italian and Libyan!’; p. 77).

By participating in the social and political vicissitudes of that period of colonization, with Festa Grande alla Dahra, Andrea Amedeo Sammartano demonstrates his feeling for that land. He involves the reader in his descriptions of the territory of Libya with precise details of streets, shores, climate, etc. The geographic details range from the physical to the human geography of Libya, and the reader is introduced to this land and its inhabitants in such a realistic way that it ends with him or her sharing and relating to the characters’ fears and worries. In particular, when the struggle for national autonomy begins, the reader is introduced to a variety of motivations, emotions and behaviours that are unique with regard to Italian culture. Sammartano’s interesting and engrossing novel represents an opportunity to pay tribute to an unfamiliar past and, above all, to an existing present in Italian culture and its society: the Italians of Libya.