by Alice Parrinello

Piazza dei Cinquecento, in Rome, is dedicated to five hundred Italian colonising soldiers who died in nineteenth-century Eritrea. Contributing to the national narrative, the piazza constructs them as mere heroic victims. Simultaneously, the piazza is central in two novels that challenge normative discourses on Italianness: L’aurora delle trans cattive (2018) by Porpora Marcasciano and La linea del colore (2020) by Igiaba Scego.