“I remember that our maternal grandmother, Luisa Quintavalle (…), who used to come every week for lunch, also disappeared. The mother-in-law who makes inappropriate comments, driving her son-in-law crazy, is a classic in comedy, let alone an ex-mother-in-law. (…). (p. 117). With my grandmother Luisa I had a special relationship that she had been able to maintain, even after being banned from Via del Lauro. We used to meet at her house and the only gift I remember from her was Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. She had given it to me to fill in the gaps at the Swiss school I attended but, above all, she had offered me something far more precious: the afternoons we had spent together, during which she had committed herself to explaining such a difficult text to me.” (pp. 278 – 279).
