Listonoška – Giannone Francesca (2025)

Southern Italy, June 1934. A bus arrives in the square of Lizzanello, a town with a few thousand inhabitants, from which local native Carlo disembarks along with his wife Anna and their son Roberto. While Carlo is excited to be returning home, his wife, originally from Northern Italy, has concerns; life in the South will be very different from the one she led as an emancipated woman in the North.
For the locals, the beautiful 'foreigner' is a mystery. Anna does not go to church, does not adhere to local unwritten customs, reads one book after another, and challenges established notions of a woman's life. Then, just a year after her arrival, she applies for a position at the local post office... The book capturing thirty years of the life of an extraordinary, highly moral, and kind woman vividly depicts Southern Italy in the mid-20th century and how some things that are now taken for granted, such as women's voting rights, were difficult to enforce. Last but not least, it raises the question of how to move forward when one meets their soulmate, but both have already pledged loyalty and love to someone else. The novel 'The Postwoman,' awarded the prestigious Premio Bancarella, which has become a phenomenon not only in Italy, presents a Southern Italian town that could be any small town in...