Mr. De Gasperi, I presume?

How do you find the man behind the monument?

To the modern world, Alcide De Gasperi is little more than a name on a street sign, a black-and-white face preserved in old newsreels. But in this lyrical biographical novel, Pino Loperfido looks beyond the monument and the history books, writing an intimate letter to the man who helped shape modern Italy.

Written sotto voce - in a voice almost whispered in the darkness -the novel follows the extraordinary life of an unassuming mountaineer: from his youth in Austrian Trentino and his time in prison alongside Cesare Battisti, through the silent years of Fascist persecution spent working in the Vatican Library, to the extraordinary achievement of leading a war-torn, starving country toward democracy and a united Europe.

Blending the sweep of history with tender glimpses of family life, Loperfido reveals the human being behind the statesman: a man who experienced politics not as power, but as a burden, a duty, almost a cross to bear.

And who, from the ruins of a broken country, helped leave behind the greatest gift of all: freedom.