Italy's colonial past is rarely spoken about or analysed compared to other ages in the country's history, and unfortunately, most accounts of the period come from the coloniser themselves. An often overlooked controversy in the Italian colonial history of Africa is the (sometimes forceful) recruitment of colonial troops from local populations (mostly Eritreans, Somali and Arabs) to fight for them – which resulted in turning neighbouring countries against each other in battle; not so surprisingly, this experience is also mainly documented by Italian sources. Times are changing, though, and it seems that there’s finally space to seriously talk about Africa and for Italy to confront its colonial past with open eyes.

In Mantova's Basilica of Santa Barbara, Professor Uoldelul Chelati Dirar and writer Carlo Lucarelli join in a conversation moderated by Itala Vivan on Dirar’s Italian translation of Hade zanta (L’ascaro. Una storia anticoloniale) by Gebreyesus Hailu, a novel about Africans fighting against Africans during the Italian rule of Eritrea.

That’s why this translation of Hade zanta by Dirar is so relevant. Written in 1927, published in 1952, and translated into Italian for the first time only now, the story revolves around Eritrean Ascari, soldiers conscripted to fight for the Italian colonisers against Libyan nationalist forces, who were in turn fighting to free themselves of Italian colonial rule. A sad page of colonialism in Africa, these local soldiers were forced to fight in the name of those who invaded their lands. Not only is it an important historical testimony ­– written by a fine intellectual, as Dirar says, “multilingual and multicultural” – and it’s one of the few African sources written at the time facts happened, but it’s also an incredible literary piece which helps put the Italian colonial experience into perspective.