Camilla is a fragile and broken young woman when she enters the Circle. Supported by the memory of her mother and the strength of the women around her, she slowly finds the courage to face her past and heal from her wounds. As a midwife, Camilla moves on the border between life and death, welcoming new lives while everything around her is devastated by World War II. Within the Circle, she learns the ancient wisdom of natural remedies – a knowledge passed down through generations – and finds a new purpose in her life. Years later, her daughter Viola, growing up amid the ruins of war and the promises of the postwar economic boom, is torn between her desire to study and her passion for a man who would instead like to relegate her to the role of mother and wife. Like her mother before her, Viola finds in the Circle the courage to choose for herself and understand that true love does not imprison, but liberates.

The technological revolution that has transformed drones from reconnaissance tools to autonomous robots with a license to kill is forever changing the nature of conflict. Through emblematic cases such as Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza, the book reveals how these machines are redefining geopolitics and introducing new forms of social control. Artificial intelligence is upending military strategy, raising ethical dilemmas, and making war increasingly inhumane. Di Feo shows us why observing the use of AI in warfare means understanding the future of humanity itself.

Mallena has become the point of reference of Norolani, a small village in inland Sardinia. She is a llevadora: she helps all the women in labour by applying age-old knowledge inherited from her mother. She asks for nothing in return, except a couple of slices of cheese or a loaf of bread. But everything changes when her husband Jubanne returns from the front, injured in both body and soul. In order to be able to afford to pay for the treatment of this man, who married her to shield her from a fate that hovered over her like a sentence, Mallena urges the mayor to remunerate her for her work. Not only is she is denied this subsidy, but, in compliance with a royal decree, a qualified obstetrician is employed, intended to replace her. Angelica Ferrari arrives from the mainland. Although she is young, she has long fought to be here, defying social convention and the disapproval of her father, who wanted her to be a wife and a mother. Now, however, she must face the wariness of the village women: despite the official prohibition, women still choose Mallena, partly because the new obstetrician uses modern methods like the forceps and doesn’t speak their language. The women of Norolani rebel and obtain permission for Mallena to continue practising, even without formal recognition. Mallena and Angelica should be rivals, and yet they are two sides of the same coin: both are driven by a desire for freedom and independence, both are victims of the daily injustice the world serves women.

1970s, Italy. Seventeen and isolated, Silvia has stopped speaking and barely eats. She has tried so hard to live her adolescence like everyone else – with first loves, friendships and school – but nothing feels right. Someone stole her voice, turning her daily life into a maze of secrets, survival strategies, and silence. In a doctor’s office, she finally meets someone who listens, someone who asks the right questions. This encounter brings her back to a summer by the lake, when everything began: when the greedy, corrupt hands of her father’s friend, the wolf-man, first crossed the boundaries of her eleven-years-old innocence, defiling it. To everyone else, Silvia seems strong and well-behaved, even when she mentions to her mother that something destroyed her. The secret stays buried between them, because both family and society seem incapable of protecting or accepting such pain. Silvia learns to live with her trauma, weaving it into a fragile web of images and metaphors that keep it away. But as she grows from a child into a young woman, her refusal to remain a victim forces her to tear down the walls she built to survive, and to trust those who can read her scars and truly listen to her story. A powerful, intense novel of hidden wounds, of parents who fail to protect, that gives voice to those who struggle to survive and try to rebuild their lives after trauma. For surviving evil – and emerging whole – is an extraordinary adventure, one that deserves to be told.