For a brief but explosive period in the mid-seventies, the young, the unemployed and the homeless of Italy’s cities came together in an unexpectedly militant movement known simply as Autonomy. Against the austerity programmes and social discipline of the ruling Christian Democrats and their would-be partners in the Communist Party, the movement developed a “politics of refusal”—expressed in school occupations and factory sabotage, mass shoplifting and violent street protest, combined with carnivalesque creativity. But the movement was soon divided, especially over the issue of armed struggle, while its opponents united behind the most repressive measures ever seen in postwar Italy.Nanni Balestrini, himself a victim of that repression, follows in spare but vivid unpunctuated prose Autonomy’s trajectory through the eyes of one working-class protagonist—from high-school rebellion, squatting and attempts to set up a free radio station, to arrest and the brutalities of imprisonment. This is a powerful and gripping novel: a rare evocation of the intensity of commitment, the passion of politics.

Explosive novel of Italy's revolutionary 1969 by leading Italian novelistIt was the Autumn of 1969, and Italy exploded. Across the north of the country, factory workers stormed out on strike, demanding better pay and working conditions. The slogan "We Want Everything" rang through the streets. Italy's "Hot Autumn" had begun.In Nanni Balestrini's fictionalized account of the uprising, a young worker from Italy's impoverished south ar-rives at Fiat's Mirafiori factory in Torino, where he barely scrapes by with fourteen hour days of backbreaking work. His frustration is palpable, and soon he is agitating again his bosses for fun and giving himself minor injuries to win sick leave. Soon enough, he is swept up by a snowballing worker movement that leads to months of continuous strikes at Mirafiori. Eventually, the conflict bubbles out of the factory. The growing pressure having produced an inevitable crack, the streets are lined with bar-ricades, and tear gas...