Listonoška

Southern Italy, June 1934. In the square of Lizzanello, a small town with a few thousand inhabitants, a bus arrives. Local man Carlo gets off, along with his wife Anna and their son Roberto. While Carlo is thrilled to be back home, his wife, originally from northern Italy, is apprehensive—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 an enigma. Anna does not go to church, does not follow the local unwritten customs, reads one book after another, and challenges the established ideas about a woman's life. Then, just a year after her arrival, she applies for a position at the local post office…
The book, which covers thirty years in the life of one extraordinary, highly moral, and kind woman, vividly portrays southern Italy in the mid-twentieth century and how some things that are now taken for granted, such as women's right to vote, were so difficult to achieve. Last but not least, it also raises the question of how to move forward when you meet your soulmate, but both of you have already promised fidelity and love to someone else.
The Postmistress, winner of the prestigious Premio Bancarella and a phenomenon not only in Italy, introduces a southern Italian town that could be any town in the world—with men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, all trying to live in this world while remaining true to their hearts and themselves.
Published in a translation by Pavla Přívozníková and Olga Čaplyginová.
This book is published with the kind support of the Centre for Books and Reading of the Italian Ministry of Culture.