Lorenza Mazzetti (1927-2020) was a  writer, filmmaker,  and theatre puppeteer who wrote this, her first novel,  in 1962, published as II Cielo cade. It was only published in this country in 2022.

“The Sky is Falling” is a fictionalised account of the early years of her life. Born in Italy,  Lorenza’s  mother died when she was a child and her father sent her, and her younger sister, to live with his sister and her husband on a farm in Tuscany. Lorenza was brought up in a highly cultured family: her uncle was Robert, the cousin of Albert Einstein. We know little about her aunt. She had two cousins, Anna Maria, and Luce.

In the novel it is Penny (much younger than Lorenza at the time) who is the main character, and drives the narrative of the book. Together with her younger sister (whom she calls Baby) they are taken to school in a chauffeur-driven car.  A Catholic school,   Jesus and Mussolini  dominate the life of the school and the students.

Lorenza expresses  this as each chapter begins with a brief statement called a pensierino in  which Italian students are expected to write to practise their spelling etc. One exercise reads : “We love Mussolini as if he were our own father.”

Penny and Baby lap up the organised militarisation of the school, singing fascist hymns, dressing up  as little fascists, and becoming a part of the seamless  marriage of Mussolini and  Catholicism.

But Penny and her sister are constantly attacked by the teachers and the Catholic priests as the uncle they live with is a Jew, while  they do not attend church. She agonises: “I had to save Uncle Wilhem, Aunt Katchen, Marie and Annie along with the guests and the Pekingese dog. And then, of course I had to save myself and Baby.”  

Outside of the school Penny plays with the local kids, hanging upside from the trees and doing back flips. Upset by her cousins,  she seeks a motherly figure in the cook: “I’d cried a lot and then I’d gone to stand between Elsa’s knees so she would comfort me, and Baby had followed.”

We know what happens in Italy in the 1930s and,  although there is much joy in the story,  the war dominates their lives, bringing hatred and death to her family.  Her life is shattered when the Germans invade her home and kill her Jewish  family. Penny and Baby are saved because they have Italian names. “What can a child do to change the rules or the choices of grownups. Nothing.”

Lorenza dedicated the book to her uncle, aunt and cousins. “This book attempts to describe the joy and happiness that their family gave me during my childhood, welcoming me as an “equal” though I was only “equal” to them in joy and “different” at the moment of death.”

After the war Lorenza came to England to work on a farm, like many displaced people. Her story is taken up in her book  “London Diary.”   Life changes again when she becomes part of the Free Cinema movement of the 1950s in London.One of her most powerful films, completed with the assistance of   Lindsay Anderson,  is called “Together.”  Made  in 1950s London,  and shot in black and white,  it follows two men  – who are deaf and dumb –  as they navigate working on the docks, living in a boarding house, and drinking in the local pub. And the local children are there, racing after the men, pulling faces, and using the docks as a giant playground.

Buy the “Sky is Falling” from women’s cooperative News from Nowhere.

Watch a clip of “Together” here