Arrivi di Mare - Presentation

On Thursday 12 October at 5pm, don't miss the presentation of Arrivi di mare, a book by Graziella Riviera.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT WILL BE IN ITALIAN.

November 1803. As Europe is ravaged by the Napoleonic wars, Cavalier Rossi, a loyal Savoy official, lands in a ghostly Venice as he travels from Vienna to Rome to join his exiled king. In the same hours on the English Channel, Captain Wright, of the Royal Navy, attempts to land a mysterious human cargo on the Norman coast which is battered by autumn storms.

Those were turbulent years. Threatened by Bonaparte the great powers set up a dense network of conspiracies, espionage and secret services on the international scene. While Piedmont, occupied by the French, became a Subalpine Department, Victor Emmanuel I, King of Sardinia, did not cease to weave plots and diplomatic contacts to reconquer his lost kingdom, with the active support of Great Britain, engaged at sea with Nelson's fleet. From Turin to Vienna, from London to Rome, from Paris to Cagliari, from Verdun to Valenciennes: individual destinies intersect in a series of surprising incidents. Courage, honour, passion, sacrifice, heroism or a simple sense of everyday duty: the stories of two families run parallel and then meet to shed light on great History.

In the second part of the book, the action moves to Genoa, annexed to Piedmont in 1814 by decree of the Congress of Vienna. In 1822, the sudden irruption in Liguria of an unconventional group of English artists (Byron, Shelley with his wife Mary, and their circle of friends) triggers new tragedies and it breaks psychological and sentimental balances with the violence of a hurricane.

But the new fleet of the restored kingdom of Sardinia is the real protagonist of this last period. The fleet takes on the sea and faces the barbarian Regencies, establishing consulates in Tunis, Tangier, Tripoli, Algiers... The tale is marked by the Arrivals by Sea, the slow and daily flow of goods in the port of Genoa reported in the Gazzette. Exotic goods, the flow of life, the comings and goings of men and fates. And unexpected twists of events, which originated far away.

Graziella Riviera: A native of Turin with roots in Monferrato, she has worked for RAI as an author and director, producing numerous television and radio programmes. These include the TV series Lunedì dell'Angelo; Un sogno a Colonia, in collaboration with the WDR; the Guido Gozzano series; La Signora dei Misteri (Carolina Invernizio); and the long-running live programme Colloqui per RadioDue.  As a journalist, she has edited reports on art, music and shows for the culture sector of TGR Piemonte, collaborating with national newspapers and the programmes Bellitalia and TG Leonardo and with 'Studi Piemontesi'. Passionate about history and folklore, she continues research and studies on the territory. For the Centro Studi Piemontesi, she has published: La strada del Fiammingo. Dal Brabante al Monferrato: i Tabachetti di Fiandra, for which she won the Guglielmo e Orsola Maddalena Caccia Prize.