La malnata

Only the strength of an unbreakable friendship can drive two young girls to rebel against injustice. Especially in the conformity of Fascist Italy.

A marginalized teenager and a peer who learns to really know her, beyond prejudice. And who, thanks to her, finds the courage to make her voice, her truth, heard. An engaging coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of a Po Valley province oppressed by the control, sexism and violence of the Ventennio.

Beatrice Salvioni’s debut has enchanted publishers around the world. It is being published simultaneously with the Italian edition in France, Spain, Greece, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Bulgaria and soon in the United States and Germany. It is being translated into 32 languages.

“Malnata emerges from the pages so vividly that you feel as if you could touch her. She is a character every publisher would like to have in his catalog.”-Anne Michel, Albin Michel, France

“Beatrice Salvioni is an absolute literary revelation. She is reminiscent of authors like Elena Ferrante and Joyce Carol Oates.”-Maria Fasce, Lumen, Spain

Monza, March 1936: on the banks of the Lambro, two girls try to hide the corpse of a man who has pinned on his shirt a pin with the fascio and the tricolor. They are shocked and half-dressed. It is Francesca who tells firsthand the story that led them there. A respectable 12-year-old girl from a middle-class family, every day she spies from the bridge a girl playing with the boys in the river, her bare feet and skirt lifted, her legs scratched and dirty with mud. She dreams of becoming her friend, despite the fact that everyone in town considers her a curmudgeon and despises her, calling her Malnata. But that determined air of hers, the air of someone who is not afraid of anything, fascinates her. It will be the theft of cherries, her first lie, that will make them friends. Against the backdrop of the Abyssinian War, the pain of loss and the turmoil of adolescence, Francesca learns with her to denounce the overpowering and abuse of power, especially male power, despite the disapproval of the community.