Edoardo De Angelis Y Sandro Veronesi: Commander

Original Language: Italian

Títutulu Original: Commander

Year of publication: 2023

Translation: Juan Manuel Salmerón Arjona

Valoración: advisable

Recommended and, above all, humanist and even endearing novel that recreates a real event, an episode that happened during World War II, when, in October 1940 the Italian submarine Hats He sank the Belgian loading Kabalo in Atlantic who transported British military material (perhaps the term “humanist” is not the most appropriate for this story … or maybe yes; keep reading …). The peculiarity of this event is due to the fact that, after the successful attack, the submarine commander, the veteran Salvatore Todaro, contravening the orders of German admiralty In order to transfer them to the Azores Islands, despite the fact that in this way their ship became an easy goal for the RAF aircraft.

Ok, I already say that “humanist” or “humanitarian”, since it is a war story and, also starring the side of the bad (I do not know if the other was very good, but I have no doubt about the iniquity of the fascists, although Todaro and their men were not), it is not the most appropriate adjective, but, without a doubt, it is a very human story, in the sense in which this term is popularly used, since it is popularly used to Less compassionate to the defeated, although moments before they had tried to kill each other. It is endearing, in addition and even perhaps something naif, the reason given by the submarine commander for his decision to rescue and give good treatment to the survivors of the sunken ship: “Because we are Italian” (the one who writes this, who is always Italianophil that the methods to obtain and conserve it were anything but “human” or “humanitarian”. The empathy that feels towards the characters is contributed to the fact that the novel is written from a multitude of points of view, different crew members of the Submarine or the wife of Todaro, but also sailors of the Belgian freighter, especially the second on board, one reclerq, which, look where it spoke Italian and served as an interpreter among the captains.

So far, we can say that Commander It is a novel enjoyable and easy to read – the chapters are quite brief, in addition – on an episode of so many, although peculiar, which occurred during World War. Now, the intention of the authors of the book, the writer Sandro Veronesi and the filmmaker Edoardo de Angelis goes or went beyond this. Following the immigration crisis that took place in the Central Mediterranean in 2019, with hundreds of people tried to reach the Italian coasts drowned in the sea before the prohibition of rescue by the authorities (if I am not mistaken, the Minister of the Interior and vice president at that time, just as now, was the infam NGOs that came to the rescue, the wave of xenophobia in society, etc., Veronesi created with his friends a movement that called “bodies” to oppose the policy regarding the Italian government. Among these friends was the Napolitan film director Edoardo de Angelis, with whom, knowing the moving background that supposed the story of Commander Todaro (hence, by the way, that it is not so Naíf, in reality, the phrase of “We are Italian”, but loaded with intention before the Xenophobic nationalists), they decided to investigate about it and, afterwards, write a script. And not only a script, but also this great novel (which is not the novelization of that, which records, but a literary work in its own right). The film, by the way, premiered in 2023, with an appropriate and surely great, as usual (I have not seen it) Pierfrancesco Favino as Commander Salvatore Todaro.