We Want Everything
A Novel
Published on 21. June 2016
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-78478-368-6 (ISBN)
Description
It was the Autumn of 1969, and Italy exploded. Across the north of the country, factory workers stormed out on strike, demanding better pay and working conditions. The slogan "We Want Everything" rang through the streets. Italy's "Hot Autumn" had begun.
In Nanni Balestrini's fictionalized account of the uprising, a young worker from Italy's impoverished south arrives at Fiat's Mirafiori factory in Torino, where he barely scrapes by with fourteen hour days of backbreaking work. His frustration is palpable, and soon he is agitating again his bosses for fun and giving himself minor injuries to win sick leave. Soon enough, he is swept up by a snowballing worker movement that leads to months of continuous strikes at Mirafiori. Eventually, the conflict bubbles out of the factory. The growing pressure having produced an inevitable crack, the streets are lined with barricades, and tear gas wafts into private homes.
Introduced by Rachel Kushner, author of the critically acclaimed The Flamethrowers, We Want Everything is an explosive account of a revolution that would clear the way for another decade of radical unrest.
In Nanni Balestrini's fictionalized account of the uprising, a young worker from Italy's impoverished south arrives at Fiat's Mirafiori factory in Torino, where he barely scrapes by with fourteen hour days of backbreaking work. His frustration is palpable, and soon he is agitating again his bosses for fun and giving himself minor injuries to win sick leave. Soon enough, he is swept up by a snowballing worker movement that leads to months of continuous strikes at Mirafiori. Eventually, the conflict bubbles out of the factory. The growing pressure having produced an inevitable crack, the streets are lined with barricades, and tear gas wafts into private homes.
Introduced by Rachel Kushner, author of the critically acclaimed The Flamethrowers, We Want Everything is an explosive account of a revolution that would clear the way for another decade of radical unrest.
Reviews / Votes
A fine example of a literary use of expressions that were then burgeoning in factories and mass meetings, caught between student unrest and worker fury. -- Umberto Eco, author of <i>The Name of the Rose</i> In this fierce, compelling novel, Balestrini has found a way to individualise the universal, and universalise the individual, creating a document of the Italian labour struggles of the 1970s that has great value both as art and history. Balestrini becomes a channel for the working-class narrator, who stands for all the Southern masses who come north to the car factories to participate in the Italian 'economic miracle.' It's a book which charted a new course for fiction, one that deserves further exploration. -- Hari Kunzru, author of <i>Gods Without Men</i> Only Balestrini . has succeeded in reconciling the tragic-epic spirit of the revolutionary movement and the ironic-combinatorial spirit of literary experimentation . [We Want Everything] is probably the most important Italian literary work of the 1960s. -- Franco "Bifo" Berardi, author of <i>Heroes</i> and <i>The Soul at Work</i> As demands arise again that echo the demands of the period-less work, more pay, more leisure, guaranteed income-We Want Everything sends a stirring reminder that these are not new demands, and that although it is a new generation rising to the challenge, it is the same fundamental struggle that continues. * PopMatters * Balestrini was present during the 'Hot Autumn' he depicts in this arresting novel, and he follows the young Italian workers with a clear eye and spare prose. * San Francisco Chronicle * We would do well to study how it was that Balestrini made politics and fiction and art, all in once place...one of the most compelling pieces of literature of the entire second half of the twentieth century. -- Rachel Kushner * New Yorker * One of the best novels of 2016 . Nothing could seem further from or more relevant to our historical moment. * Chicago Tribune * We Want Everything dramatically and ecstatically captures a historical moment. It is an exciting tale resplendent in emotion about a movement that engulfed the factories of Italy in the late 1960s and was part of a greater political and cultural challenge to the ueberlords of the world's capitalist class -- Ron Jacobs * Counterpunch *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
395 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78478-368-6 (9781784783686)
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