A Castle in Romagna by Igor Stiks: book review

A Castle in Romagna (2018) is set in the summer of 1995 in Romagna in the north of Italy.

The narrator, a young Bosnian refugee, visits the ancient Mardi Castle in Romagna, Italy, as a tourist with two women, Marianne and Irene. He wants to see the castle’s dungeon where the renowned poet Enzo Strecci spent his last days.

In the castle he meets an elderly Franciscan friar, Niccolo, with ‘unruly hair with its luxuriant curls, hanging like bunches of grapes all about his round face.’ From Niccolo, the castle’s guide, the Bosnian learns about the life of Enzo Strecci who first came to Italy in 1535 when he was twenty-five years old.

Not only does he learn about the life of Strecci, but he also hears the true stories of the friar’s escape from conflict and hardship as an eighteen year old.

The novel oscillates in time, like a pendulum, from Enzo’s life to Niccolo’s life, and between the centuries. Both stories are love stories, but with their own tragedies of politics, war, and loss.

We never learn the name of the young Bosnian tourist and his story, yet we assume that the lives of the three men are connected by a longing for home.

This novella is a quick, light read—nothing too deep and intellectual, but with the insights of local love in times of conflict.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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