Mario Tobino

In the Resistance (the war of liberation between 1943 and 1945), the decision to take up arms against Nazi-Fascism rarely arose from a deliberate, mature reflection; more often than not, it was an act of unconscious bravado, oblivious to the risks being run. As Luigi Meneghello wrote in *I piccoli maestri*, it was > a cry, (...) a collective (...) intoxicating feeling: one sensed the overwhelmi

The book is set in an asylum, and the narrator (and protagonist) is a psychiatrist. In the first part of the book, the character of a former hospital physician is delineated—a commanding figure and a man of science. The close examination of his persona reveals a whole series of idiosyncrasies (he never leaves the asylum, fears thunderstorms, never touches the doors leading to the various wards,

Just like *Per le Antiche Scale*, the book is set in an asylum, and the protagonist, who is also the first-person narrator, is a psychiatrist. There is no plot; rather, it is a fragmented narrative composed of descriptions of individual figures—mostly women—within the institution: patients, nurses, nuns, and peasant women from the countryside surrounding the asylum. Some of them, such as Lella,