January 09, 2019

Great reviews for Destinazione Libertà!
















January 2019 is starting very positive for my memoir Destination Freedom. It got two new positive reviews in the Italian Media. Thank you to Maria Sara Cetraro from Armando Editore Italy for the English translation.
English Translation of Review Il Borghese Gennaio 2019

This biography of Lily Amis looks like a short story by De Sade. In De Sade the clean, naive, confident characters are deceived, outraged, dominated, and they have to face perpetual obstacles, such as the story of Lily Amis and her portentous mother. Born in Iran, members of an excellent family, they conceive the advent of the Khomeini’s regime as a regression, a mixture of religious fanaticism, male domination, and pitiful privation of freedom; on the contrary, Lily's family was open, cultured, and tolerant. Lily's mother, when Iran clashes with Iraq, decides to escape from war and tyranny. It is very difficult to escape, finally they leave Iran, at first Switzerland does not accept them and they are rejected but they can’t go back to Iran. They go twice to Switzerland and they are allowed to stay.
But, in a precarious and perverse situation that lasts fifteen years, without a definitive recognition of dignity and citizenship they cannot find a job, and without a job they cannot settle once and for all! Many difficulties occur: Lily’s father abandons his wife and daughter, a second husband reveals as a foolish enemy and deceiver, the portentous, capable, strong mother of Lily ends up sick, even Lily, aiming to become Swiss, marries a fool and traitorous man, Sven. The Swiss authorities seem to get pleasure from mistreating foreign people, keeping them in a state of insecurity. The story goes on as a modern saga.
Both the bureaucracy and the injustices of the Western countries and the Islamic fanaticism are recalled in the story. And it is a sacred concept the one that Lily Amis chooses to conclude her memoir: foreigners should be totally welcomed or it is better to not welcome them at all. The characters are described naturally, through their actions: the maternal grandparents, who are honest and generous, devoted to the parental bonds, the indifferent father of Lily, Hamid, the cynical husband of Lily’s mum, Sven, the infamous teachers, ruthless bureaucrats, a degenerate doctor… Among all these people stand out Sima, the mother of Lily, a moral sculpture, and Lily herself, in a journey between the privation of freedom and the courage of being free.

Written by Antonio Sacca for IL Borghese January 2019

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