French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Sofri, Les Ailes de plomb. Milan, December 15, 1969
History, Politics and Society
Adriano Sofri, Les ailes de plomb, Milan, December 15, 1969
Translated from the Italian by Philippe Audegean and Jean-Claude Zancarini. Preface by Martin Rueff and Jean-Claude Zancarini.
Editions Verdier
256 pages
19 €
ISBN : 978-2-86432-618-2
In Les Ailes de plomb, Adriano Sofri revisits the night of December 15, 1969, when Giuseppe Pinelli, a Milanese anarchist, fell from the window of the police station where he was being interrogated regarding the Piazza Fontana bombing. The attack, which had taken place that very afternoon, killed sixteen people and injured eighty-eight. Pinelli's death is widely considered to have triggered the assassination of Police Commissioner Calabresi, an act for which Adriano Sofri was accused of being the mastermind.
Sofri's book is a meticulous reconstruction of that day and its context. This dramatic reportage, which draws on all kinds of evidence, is a true writer's book. In it, Sofri interrogates the language of the era: the language
of emancipation, of insurrection. He constantly asks himself: what was it worth? What can it be worth today?
Sofri's testimony is of great interest to readers wishing to understand what happened in Italy at the time, giving rise to one of the bloodiest post-war periods. For his narrative concerns not only
the protagonists of this dark affair—it casts a chiaroscuro light on a major event in recent Italian history, its legacy, its value as a historical paradigm, and, beyond that, on Italy's ongoing relationship with a period when the dreams of emancipation sweeping across Europe took a tragic turn in that country.
By preventing the window of history from closing too quickly on Pinelli's death, Adriano Sofri uses his writing to crack open a shutter onto our present.
__________________________
The book dedicated by Carlo Ginzburg to the trial of Adriano Sofri was recently reissued by Verdier:
The Judge and the Historian
Marginal Notes on the Sofri Trial
Carlo Ginzburg
Collective translation from the Italian
Paperback edition out of print (1997)
224 pages
9,50 €
ISBN : 978-2-86432-512-3
On May 17, 1972, Commissioner Calabresi was assassinated in Milan. This police officer had been portrayed, notably by the protest newspaper Lotta Continua, as responsible for the death of an anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, whose body was found after falling from a window in December 1969 in the courtyard of the police headquarters. Pinelli had been summoned for questioning following the Piazza Fontana bombing (at the National Agricultural Bank)—an attack that, as was later revealed, was part of the "strategy of tension" implemented by neo-fascist elements and others linked to the state apparatus.
Sixteen years later, in July 1988, Leonardo Marino, a former militant of the Lotta Continua group, confessed to participating in the murder and implicated his comrades Ovidio Bompressi, Giorgio Pietrostefani, and Adriano Sofri. Following a long judicial ordeal—seven trials in nine years—the three men were sentenced to twenty-two years in prison, without evidence and solely on the strength of the "confession" of this "repentant" informant, while their accuser benefited from the statute of limitations.
In this case, the author finds many aspects of the witch trials he has often studied from a historical perspective, particularly those brought by the Inquisition in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries. Methodological reflection on clues and evidence, along with a comparative analysis of the methods of the judge and the historian, are combined here with a meticulous study of documents and testimonies, revealing the groundlessness of the accusations. The Sofri case does not concern the Italian reader alone: how was it possible in a democracy? Bompressi, Pietrostefani, and Sofri are victims of a miscarriage of justice that can and must be corrected.
The events surrounding the Piazza Fontana bombing and the subsequent death of Giuseppe Pinelli remain among the most heavily scrutinized episodes in modern Italian history. This period marked the beginning of decades marked by political violence, clandestine operations, and severe social polarization often described through the framework of the strategy of tension. Writers, historians, and legal scholars have repeatedly returned to these years to examine how democratic institutions responded to intense internal pressures, ideological extremism, and the shifting boundaries between state security and civil rights during the turbulent post-war era.
Readers interested in contemporary European political history, investigative narrative, and the long-term cultural echoes of 1968 may find this work relevant. The text engages closely with the public vocabulary, ideological commitments, and historical memory of an era when movements for radical social transformation encountered profound state and societal crises. Through a careful examination of documents, testimonies, and the language of political emancipation, the volume contributes to ongoing discussions regarding collective memory, justice, and the ways societies confront traumatic historical turning points.
