Maria di Ísili

In a polyphony of voices, with an intense, mature and metrical language, Cristian Mannu regales us with the story of a woman who, paying the full price for her choice, follows the laws of desire and challenges the social rules of an archaic Sardinia populated by vagrants, midwives-accabadore, bastard children, acts of violence and unspeakable secrets.

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Aunt Borica, who has brought many babies into the world during her lifetime, immediately understands that those blue eyes can only be the work of an angel or a demon.

Ever since her childhood, Maria has stood out from the rest of her family: from her mother, always dressed in black and staring into space, from her father, who has eyes blacker than a sooty fireplace, and from her older sister, Evelina, who always has a rosary in her hand.

Mary is passionate and dreamer, and she has a special talent: under her hands the loom becomes like a piano, generating wonderful tapestries, where she skillfully weaves together wool and copper threads.

Thanks to her talent, Maria seems destined to a happy life in the small village of Isili, where the wind that lashes against the stones of the houses smells of wild oats and rosemary. But one day Antonio Lorrai, the coppersmith, the gypsy, comes to the village, handsome like a prince from a fairy tale on his black horse. And for the first time, Maria, who at sixteen has never kissed anyone, feels herself flaring up like a flower in the fire.

However, Antonio is engaged to marry her sister Evelina, Evelina that Maria loves deeply, Evelina who is expecting a baby by that dark man ….

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