Eva Sleeps

Author/Guide: Francesca Melandri

Why a Booktrail?

1960s, 2000s: A woman receives a message from her past – her mother’s past – about an long lost affair ..

ISBN: 978-1609453121
Translator: Katherine Gregor
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

Eva is 40 years old and has received an odd request from South Tyrol in Italy. A retired policeman there wants to speak to her about her mother – Gerda.

Gerda was born there into poverty in the 1950s and became pregnant with Eva when only very young. Cast aside by her family she goes to live in a convent where she gives birth. She luckily gets a job back at the hotel where she worked before becoming pregnant and works well, quickly rising up the ranks to a leading chef. Eva, still a baby lives with relatives and waits for her mum to come home.

However disaster awaits the family times are difficult and for various reasons they are persecuted by the fascist Italian army. She eventually finds love with Vito but the relationship is doomed since she is unmarried and has a child.

But now, Vito wants to know the child of the woman he loved. He has a story to tell. And so Eva travels to his home in South Tyrol to find out and to meet her past.

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Travel Guide

Eva and Gerda’s journey to the South Tyrol

Both women travel on an epic train journey from the North to the South of Italy. Eva has many questions for him and she knows that this will be her one and only chance

South Tyrol

Gerda and Eva have very different experiences in the South Tyrol and in alternating chapters, the two women show how the region has changed over time and what this means for them and the greater scheme of things:

The South Tyrol is also known as Alto Adige. At the end of the 1ww, it was ceded to Italy but the German speakers there were not left to live in peace. Benito Mussolini wanted to essentially evict them or to ensure that this was now Italy and should be treated as such. The people there were subjected to all nature of abuse and harassment and for a time, the conditions in South Tyrol were inflammatory, silence and very unstable.

During WW2, Germany made this area part of Germany again by annexing it. Following the war, the region managed to ensure that it was autonomous but part of Italy but that people there could speak German and/or Italian. Like the best of ideas, this did not go to plan and so the UN had to step in. Many years passed until the mid 1980s whenSouth Tyrol was united and became one region again although part of it still remains in Italy.