If in “The Son of Bakunin” Sergio Atzeni induces a young man to wander between Sulcis and Cagliari in an attempt to reconstruct the history – human and political – of Tullio Saba (miner, trade unionist, politician, man), in “The Candidate” (Edizioni Catartica, 144 pp.) Maurizio Onnis forces a Milanese journalist to cross the territories that for Marco Sanna, president of the Sardinia Region engulfed by a scandal, constituted the largest electoral basin.
The juxtaposition of the two novels helps us reflect on how powerful the quest for truth is in both, which, when mediated with the third narrative, undermines its very credibility and function. Just as we cannot know who Tullio truly was, similarly we can only try to identify, among the many contradictory versions proposed by those who knew him, who Marco Saba is. Who he is and who he was before becoming President.
The facts: Saba was arrested on the very day he was supposed to take office. He was accused of having done business with major electricity companies, intent on erecting poles and panels throughout the region in the name of supposed environmentalism, facilitating land acquisitions. And not only that. A few days later, several managers from three multinational energy companies also fell into the investigators' net.
So, who is Satta? Did he serve or betray his country? Is he left-wing or right-wing? Someone—a mayor—responds that he's neither: he's like the wind. Like the wind they try to harness to produce energy. In the name of progress. In the name of the Green Deal. In the name of money. A land held hostage emerges fiercely from the pages, first and foremost by those—in the name of a job, a concession, a promised easy profit—who decided to sell it off.
Onnis's intention to place his authorial voice at the service of a social and political issue is clearly stated in his narrative: this is the pact he seals with the reader, and it never fails him until the last page. We recommend reading this book while listening to "Liberos, rispettos, uguales" by Kenze Neke, a... evergreen.
