Per un pugno di libri - Season 23 Episode 7

The seventh episode features a comparison between the Liceo Scientifico "Antonio Rosmini" of Rovereto and the Liceo Scientifico "Benedetti-Tommaseo" of Venice on a highly successful novel: "The Life Ahead" by the French writer of Lithuanian origin Romain Gary. Published in 1975, the book won the most important French literary prize in the same year: the Goncourt. Set in the immediate post-war period, in the multi-ethnic Parisian suburb of Belleville, Romain Gary's novel tells the story of Momo, a 10-year-old Arab boy, and Madame Rose, an elderly Jewish ex-prostitute who miraculously escaped the Holocaust, to whom the child was entrusted. Alongside them is a whole crowd of "miserables", outcasts of society. Despite the harshness, crude and even violent tones of the story, the book has moments of humor and authentic poetry. Gary's entire novel seems to revolve around a key question that young Momo asks old Mr. Hamil: "can you live without someone to love?"