For a brief but explosive period in the mid-seventies, the young, the unemployed and the homeless of Italy’s cities came together in an unexpectedly militant movement known simply as Autonomy. Against the austerity programmes and social discipline of the ruling Christian Democrats and their would-be partners in the Communist Party, the movement developed a “politics of refusal”—expressed in school occupations and factory sabotage, mass shoplifting and violent street protest, combined with carnivalesque creativity. But the movement was soon divided, especially over the issue of armed struggle, while its opponents united behind the most repressive measures ever seen in postwar Italy. Nanni Balestrini, himself a victim of that repression, follows in spare but vivid unpunctuated prose Autonomy’s trajectory through the eyes of one working-class protagonist—from high-school rebellion, squatting and attempts to set up a free radio station, to arrest and the brutalities of imprisonment. This is a powerful and gripping novel: a rare evocation of the intensity of commitment, the passion of politics.

The Unseen

Literature & Fiction

Balestrini, Nanni

Literary

Verso

This book is unique as no other novel can claim to be: one of 109,027,350,432,000 possible variations of the same work of fiction. Inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde, Tristano was first published in 1966 in Italian. But only recently has digital technology made it possible to realise the author’s original vision. The novel comprises ten chapters, and the fifteen pairs of paragraphs in each of these are shuffled anew for each published copy. No two versions are the same. The random variations between copies enact the variegations of the human heart, as exemplified by the lovers at the centre of the story. The copies of the English translation of Tristano are individually numbered, starting from 10,000 (running sequentially from the Italian and German editions). Included is a foreword by Umberto Eco explaining how Balestrini’s experiment with the physical medium of the novel demonstrates ‘that originality and creativity are nothing more than the chance handling of a combination’.

Tristano

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Explosive novel of Italy’s revolutionary 1969 by leading Italian novelist It was 1969, and temperatures were rising across the factories of the north as workers demanded better pay and conditions. Soon, discontent would erupt in what became known as Italy’s “Hot Autumn.” A young worker from the impoverished south arrives at Fiat’s Mirafiori factory in Turin, where his darker complexion begins to fade from the fourteen-hour workdays in sweltering industrial heat. He is frequently late for work, and sells his blood when money runs low. He fakes a crushed finger to win sick leave. His bosses try to withhold his wages. Our cynical, dry-witted narrator will not bend to their will. “I want everything, everything that’s owed to me,” he tells them. “Nothing more and nothing less, because you don’t mess with me.” Around him, students are holding secret meetings and union workers begin halting work on the assembly lines, crippling the Mirafiori factory with months of continuous strikes. Before long, barricades line the roads, tear gas wafts into private homes, and the slogan “We Want Everything” is ringing through the streets. Wrought in spare and measured prose, Balestrini’s novel depicts an explosive uprising. Introduced by Rachel Kushner, the author of the best-selling The Flamethrowers, We Want Everything is the incendiary fictional account of events that led to a decade of revolt.

We Want Everything: A Novel

The explosive novel of Italy’s revolutionary 1969\nIt was 1969, and temperatures were rising across the factories of the north as workers demanded better pay and conditions. Soon, discontent would erupt in what became known as Italy’s Hot Autumn. A young worker from the impoverished south arrives at Fiat’s Mirafiori factory in Turin, where his darker complexion begins to fade from the fourteen-hour workdays in sweltering industrial heat. His bosses try to withhold his wages. Our cynical, dry-witted narrator will not bend to their will. “I want everything, everything that’s owed to me,” he tells them. “Nothing more and nothing less, because you don’t mess with me.”\nAround him, students are holding secret meetings and union workers begin halting work on the assembly lines, crippling the Mirafiori factory with months of continuous strikes. Before long, barricades line the roads, tear gas wafts into private homes, and the slogan “We Want Everything” is ringing through the streets.\nWrought in spare and measured prose, Balestrini’s novel depicts an explosive uprising. Introduced by Rachel Kushner, the author of the best-selling The Flamethrowers, We Want Everything is the incendiary fictional account of events that led to a decade of revolt.

We Want Everything: A Novel (Verso Fiction)

United States

Verso Fiction

For a brief explosive period in the mid-1970s, the young and the unemployed of Italy’s cities joined the workers in an unexpectedly militant movement known simply as Autonomy (Autonomia). Its “politics of refusal” united its opponents behind draconian measures more severe than any seen since the war. Nanni Balestrini, the poet of youth rebellion, himself a victim of that repression, has invented a remarkable fictional form to express the hopes and conflicts of the movement. In spare but vivid prose, The Unseen follows Autonomy’s trajectory through the eyes of a single working-class protagonist—from high-school rebellion, squatting and attempts to set up a free radio station to arrest and the brutalities of imprisonment. This is a powerful and gripping novel: a rare evocation of the intensity of commitment, the passion of politics.

Verso Books

I'm never coming back to my home town. A major Italian author’s tale of growing up with Italy’s most brutal criminal enterprise, the Camorra. This striking novella is based on first-hand research of the Camorra, an Italian organized crime network more powerful and violent than the Mafia. It's the brutal organization that was recently exposed by Roberto Saviano, both in his brilliant non-fiction account and the film adaptation. Saviano, as it turns out, first interviewed Camorra members while working as a research assistant to Nanni Balestrini, collecting the stories that would become Sandokan. Though fiction, Sandokan is horribly, devastatingly real. The narrator is a resigned victim of the Camorra. The Camorra members are his neighbors, and he presents an uncompromising description of a world under savage occupation, the true combination of backwardness, violence, and ambition that locks small-town southern Italy under the control of organized crime. It is one of the most meaningful and riveting books to have been produced by Italian literature of recent years, by one of Italy’s most significant authors. The Contemporary Art of the Novella series is designed to highlight work by major authors from around the world. In most instances, as with Imre Kertész, it showcases work never before published; in others, books are reprised that should never have gone out of print. It is intended that the series feature many well-known authors and some exciting new discoveries. And as with the original series, The Art of the Novella, each book is a beautifully packaged and inexpensive volume meant to celebrate the form and its practitioners.

Sandokan (The Contemporary Art of the Novella)

Contemporary

Melville House

Nanni Balestrini is the most significant writer of Italy's revolutionary period in the sixties and seventies, comparable only to Pier Paolo Pasolini. Blackout is the first book of his poetry available in English. Written immediately after he was indicted by Italian authorities and forced to flee, it has at its center the great New York blackout of 1977, a moment of chaos and panic, but also of mutual aid and social solidarity. This comes to stand in for the years from 1968–1979 in Italy, when a more or less open civil war between popular militants and the state escalated from strikes and riots to armed struggle. At once documentary and visionary, it is a poem of heroic and daily struggles for freedom, captured in heroic and daily language. It is a poem of popular revolt being crushed, a poem for our era as well as his.
Nanni Balestrini, born in Milan in 1935, was member of the avant-garde literary movement Gruppo 63 with Eduardo Sanguinetti and Umberto Eco. He is the author of numerous books, including the novels The Unseen and We Want Everything, and his history of the movement of '77, L'orda d'oro (written with Sergio Bianchi). He lives in Rome.
Peter Valente is the author of A Boy Asleep Under the Sun: Versions of Sandro Penna (Punctum Books, 2014) and the translator of numerous works by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Antonin Artaud, and others. His translation of Artraud's late letters is forthcoming from City Lights.

Blackout

Poetry

Commune Editions

L'orda d'oro. 1968-1977: la grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed esistenziale

History

Moroni, Primo

Europe

Feltrinelli

Gli invisibili (Tascabili Bompiani) (Italian Edition)

Tascabili Bompiani

other editor: Mondadori Oscar Scrittori Moderni

Gli invisibili

DeriveApprodi

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Books by Balestrini, Nanni

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Balestrini, Nanni. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Unseen

Tristano

We Want Everything: A Novel

We Want Everything: A Novel (Verso Fiction)

The Unseen

Sandokan (The Contemporary Art of the Novella)

Blackout

L'orda d'oro. 1968-1977: la grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed esistenziale

Gli invisibili (Tascabili Bompiani) (Italian Edition)

Gli invisibili