Half of Nothing

By Enzo Marzano

War is the cruel stepmother of every man. It drags the human soul into a perpetual duel until it is utterly nullified. Antonio returns from captivity. We are at the close of World War II. Held prisoner on an island in the north of England, he lived in symbiosis with the sea and with foreign people. Now, he returns to his small village, Arbusto, only to find that everything has changed. Our mean-spirited, gossipy, and ambiguous provincial world welcomes him with utter indifference. All of Italy is mired in its post-war era, with its lies and all the hypocrisy it has always possessed-camouflaging it as hospitality and love for one's neighbour. Antonio knows that his life has changed in this nation that was once Fascist and now "discovers" itself to be anti-Fascist; a country that went to war against the whole world without shoes and without dignity, inventing a Duce it would disown on the very day of his defeat. Every day, the protagonist faces a new ordeal, until he eventually sinks into the malice of his own Arbusto. Other veterans become brigands and continue to fight their own war-one that will lead them to their deaths. This young man reunites with his sister, Maria, and will discover the depths of the feelings she had hidden in the recesses of her soul. I consider this work the novel of novels. Human lives pile upon the lives of others, blending together until they become a morass of thoughts and words. Nothing is what it seems, and the reader is led by the hand through this hellish labyrinth-a story where hatred, resentment, and dishonesty reign supreme while Italy still slumbers in its lethargy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GTL98DQK
• ISBN13: 9798253066898
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"