A Day in the Life of a Scrutineer (by Italo Calvino)

Overview

In this episode of "Per Un Pugno di Libri", the "Vittorio Alfieri" classical high school in Turin and the "Giuseppe Mercalli" scientific high school in Naples discuss the novel "La giornata di uno scrutatore" by Italo Calvino. Published in 1963, the book is inspired by a personal experience of the writer, who, as a candidate for the PCI, found himself visiting the polling station set up at the Cottolengo in Turin. There, the sick were induced to vote for the then majority party: the Christian Democracy. In the novel, in fact, the young protagonist, Amerigo Ormea, is a communist pollster sent by the party to the Cottolengo precisely to monitor the consolidated habit of manipulating the votes of the sick. But faced with that "world" and that pain, and above all faced with the self-denial with which the patients are cared for by a nun, the Marxist faith of the protagonist enters into crisis.