OUT NOW:

WE WANT EVERYTHING

By Nanni Balestrini

Introduction by Rachel Kushner

Explosive novel of Italy’s revolutionary 1969 by leading Italian novelist

“A fine example of a literary use of expressions that were then burgeoning in factories and mass meetings, caught between student unrest and worker fury.” – UMBERTO ECO, AUTHOR OF THE NAMING OF THE ROSE

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ON THE BLOG:

FIAT HAS BRANDED ME: A HOT AUTUMN TIMELINE FOR NANNI BALESTRINI’S WE WANT EVERYTHING http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2711-fiat-has-branded-me-a-hot-autumn-timeline-for-nanni-balestrini-s-we-want-everything

Our FREE ebook sampler available to download give you the first two chapters of We Want Everything for FREE: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2351-we-want-everything?discount_code=SummerReads2016

Rachel Kushner’s edited Introduction examines the historical context of Nanni Balestrini’s We Want Everything, an explosive novel of Italy’s revolutionary "Hot Autumn" of 1969. She also praises Balestrini’s invention of a new literary form, the novel-inchiesta, documenting workers’ struggles in their own voices, which she calls a singular artistic achievement. http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2718-popular-mechanics-how-factory-revolts-inspired-a-new-form-of-the-novel

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Explosive novel of Italy’s revolutionary 1969 by leading Italian novelist

It was 1969, and temperatures were rising across the factories of the north as workers demanded better pay and conditions. Soon, discontent would erupt in what became known as Italy’s “Hot Autumn.”

A young worker from the impoverished south arrives at Fiat’s Mirafiori factory in Turin, where his darker complexion begins to fade from the fourteen-hour workdays in sweltering industrial heat. He is frequently late for work, and sells his blood when money runs low. He fakes a crushed finger to win sick leave. His bosses try to withhold his wages. Our cynical, dry-witted narrator will not bend to their will. “I want everything, everything that’s owed to me,” he tells them. “Nothing more and nothing less, because you don’t mess with me.”

Around him, students are holding secret meetings and union workers begin halting work on the assembly lines, crippling the Mirafiori factory with months of continuous strikes. Before long, barricades line the roads, tear gas wafts into private homes, and the slogan “We Want Everything” is ringing through the streets. Wrought in spare and measured prose, Balestrini’s novel depicts an explosive uprising. Introduced by Rachel Kushner, the author of the best-selling The Flamethrowers, We Want Everything is the incendiary fictional account of events that led to a decade of revolt.

NANNI BALESTRINI was born in Milan in 1935 and was a member of the influential avant-garde Gruppo 63, along with Umberto Eco and Eduardo Sanguineti. He is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including Blackout and Ipocalisse, and novels such as Tristano, Vogliamo Tutto, and La Violenza Illustrata.

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“In this fierce, compelling novel, Balestrini has found a way to individualise the universal, and universalise the individual, creating a document of the Italian labour struggles of the 1970s that has great value both as art and history. Balestrini becomes a channel for the working-class narrator, who stands for all the Southern masses who come north to the car factories to participate in the Italian ‘economic miracle.’ It’s a book which charted a new course for fiction, one that deserves further exploration.”

- Hari Kunzru, author of Gods Without Men

“Only Balestrini … has succeeded in reconciling the tragic—epic spirit of the revolutionary movement and the ironic—combinatorial spirit of literary experimentation … [We Want Everything] is probably the most important Italian literary work of the 1960s.”

- Franco “Bifo” Berardi, author of Heroes and The Soul at Work

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HARDBACK: MAY 2016 / 224 pages / ISBN 9781784783686 / $29.95 / £16.99 / $29.95 (CAN)

AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK NOW

WE WANT EVERYTHING is available with a 20% discount. Purchasing details available here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2114-we-want-everything

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