Frequently Asked Questions

Two of the principal cast are real historical figures, although I’ve largely shown them in imagined situations. The Genoese Jewish aviator Massimo Teglio was the head of North Italian DELASEM from November 1943, and he worked closely with don Francesco Repetto, who acted as treasurer. They were both extraordinary men in their very different ways, and I hope that Daughter of Genoa will introduce them to a new audience.

Behind them lurks a third, mostly offstage figure: Cardinal Pietro Boetto SJ, Archbishop of Genoa. Boetto stands out even within the (already small) group of Catholic hierarchs who actively opposed the Final Solution. You can read a wonderful article about him by Susan Zuccotti here.

My other characters may be imagined, but they stand for something real. The story of Anna, the daughter of a secular Italian Jewish father and a Scottish Protestant mother, illustrates the situation of those who may not have identified as Jewish, but who were defined as such with the advent of the Racial Laws. Silvia and Bernardo represent those Waldensians who gave themselves heart and soul to the Resistance. As members of an oppressed religious minority, many Waldensians felt an instinctive solidarity with the Jewish people, and were prepared to act on it – even though, up to that point, they would have met few people outside of their own community.

As for Father Vittorio, he’s a deeply sensitive man who is drawn to help the vulnerable. This makes him a fish out of water in the pre-Vatican-II Jesuit context, and a rather unpredictable factor in DELASEM’s efforts. He’s flawed, beaten-down, and not all that heroic. The reader can decide just what he represents, and whether or not he’s sympathetic.

Whatever act of derring-do you’re about to mention, the answer is yes, he did.

Teglio was a pragmatic, sociable man who didn’t much care for helping to run the family business, or getting up before noon unless he had to. But he loved flying, with all the risk and adrenaline that brings. And when others needed him, his cool head, high stress tolerance and natural charm proved to be incredible assets.

Later, Teglio spoke frankly about the emotional strain of his resistance work. But it suited him, and he got a certain thrill out of operating under the nose of his enemies. He also ran DELASEM very effectively and preferred to do things himself, or together with a very few trusted people. So yes, he did (for example) shave off his moustache and go around Genoa on public transport – at least, until it was too dangerous to stay there at all.

In Daughter of Genoa, we see him as the leading man in a fictional love story. That’s all my invention. But I did all I could to stay true to the man himself, even if his exploits sometimes defy belief.

Massimo Teglio gave a handful of interviews towards the end of his life, and these give a vivid sense of his character. He makes a significant appearance in one English-language source: Alexander Stille’s book Benevolence and Betrayal, which is available in Italian as Uno su mille. If you know Italian, then you can also meet Teglio in Carlo Brizzolari’s Gli ebrei nella storia di Genova and Genova nella seconda guerra mondiale, read the partial transcription of an interview with him here, and listen to him in conversation with historian Michele Sarfatti. I used all these sources in my research, and very wonderful it was.

Daughter of Genoa is not a religious book in the sense that it advances any particular theological outlook. My relationship to faith is complex, evolving, and profoundly private. I’m not interested in broadcasting it to a wider public.

But religion does play a big part here, as it does in all my writing. I’m fascinated by how people live out their faith, especially in difficult times. And this project, in particular, required serious thought about the interactions between religious, cultural, and national belonging.

My family background, my academic studies, my interests and my particular trajectory mean that I have meaningful connections across the Catholic (especially Jesuit), Jewish, and Protestant/Reforming worlds. That’s my great good fortune, and it also helped me a lot in researching this book. It’s not that I had the answers: in fact, I had to do a huge amount of learning. But I had some sense of what questions to ask, and I had people around me who could help to answer them.

Definitely not. Escape to Tuscany and Daughter of Genoa stand entirely alone. While they are both about aspects of resistance in occupied Italy, they’re also quite different in tone and feel. So you can read either, both, or neither – although I hope you’ll decide to pick one of them up.