Tales Storyالعربية🌼 A Summer in Ostia
Ostia, on the coast of Rome, summer 1958. The Moretti family is living the most beautiful summer of their lives: Sofia's engagement, Marco's song reaching the radio, and Uncle Enzo's return from the sea after twenty-two years. But at the end of the harbour quay stands a warehouse locked for seven years that nobody looks at. A five-chapter novel of joy, secrets and reversals, with an ending no one expects. (For adults: a tragic ending and loss)
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How it begins: A Summer Like No Other
Summer 1958 — Ostia, on the coast of Rome
Ostia was not a big town, but it knew how to wake up.
It woke an hour before Rome, when the fishing boats came back from the sea loaded with sardines and squid, and when the bakeries opened their doors and the smell of hot bread drifted out to mix with the smell of salt and seaweed. In those June days the sun rose from behind the distant hills, tinting the sea a light gold and glinting on the windows of the coloured houses that lined the seafront road.
That morning, Giovanni Moretti was walking along the harbour quay, as he had done every day for twenty years.
He was a man of fifty, broad-shouldered and grey at the temples, in an old navy jacket and a cloth cap he only took off at home. In his left pocket he carried a small black notebook in which he wrote down everything that went into the warehouses and everything that came out, because he was…
The lesson: Small negligence can make a great tragedy, and a warning put off may never arrive
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