Insorgiamo is a remarkable piece of work on many levels: as a piece of collective writing, neither anonymous nor singling out any one person; as a history of one of Italy’s strongest workers’ movements of the past decade; as a celebration of the ideals of a trade union; as a depiction of the struggles faced by that same union on a daily basis from management, legal loopholes, hostile takeovers and violent incursions; and, finally, as an experiment in writing a passionate, engrossing piece of non-fiction of a story where there is no end in sight – as the book makes clear in its closing remarks.

We win if all of us, with our limitations, our different imports, cease to be a minority. Because the problem with this struggle is not in saying, with a flyer perhaps, that we need a full-scale nationalisation, that allowing companies to dismiss workers again has been disastrous, that we demand the resignation of this or that person… We’re already beyond all this. This is part of our past. The game we’re playing now concerns our future and present. And the game of this present, of this future, is being played out right now, today; we can play the game the right way by helping each other develop our struggle and making it into a positive force to change the power dynamics in this country.

Read the full piece at European Literature Network!