We Want Everything
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in Italy in 1971, and now available for the first time for U.S. readers, this novel unveils a fictionalized version of Italy's historic "hot autumn" of 1969, when workers around the nation protested for better working conditions and wages. Balestrini (Tristano) splits his story into two parts, with each narrated by the same unnamed young man from southern Italy. The first part is both wry and charming as the narrator bumbles from one job to the next, frequently complaining with a crass, blunt mouth about various inadequacies that prevent him from employment bliss. "Everything had a price," he claims, and he judges worth on material objects. Before long, he flees to the north, eventually finding work assembling automobiles at a Fiat plant in Turin. After feigning injury to exploit the company's medical leave program, he helps organize a massive strike for non-union workers against the company, arguing for better benefits. The second part of the novel follows the strike closely, and the narrator's voice transitions from jocular bluntness into one of war reporter, with brief bursts of information on groups and departments joining in "the struggle" for equality. This compelling novel works well as both historic relic and parallel to many contemporary workplace conflicts.
