David Hewson explores oppression and identity in
The Garden of Angels

At his beloved grandfather’s deathbed, a teenage boy receives a yellowing manuscript which reveals his grandfather’s darkest secrets from Nazi-occupied Venice in 1943. The manuscript describes how the grandfather’s support for a murdered Jewish woman drew the attention of the underground resistance. The Garden of Angels is a gripping tale, both for its imagining of war-torn Venice and the timeless portrait of life under Fascism.

What inspired you to write The Garden of Angels?

I was in part inspired by the statue of a partisan woman by the Giardini waterfront stop (in Venice), half hidden by the water, and all the signs and plaques in that area which mark an atrocity by the Nazis. Another driver behind the story was my shock at the sudden swing to the right which began with the Brexit vote in 2016, a bizarre act of national self-harm which stripped away our EU citizenship for no reason and no reward at all. I wanted the book to be a reminder that we need to be aware of the real past, good and bad, in order not to repeat its mistakes.

After a millennium of self-rule, Venice fell to occupiers including France, Austria, and Nazi Germany. How did those waves of conquest shape your characters’ lives and identities? 

The end of the republic shaped them enormously - a thousand years of liberty gone to a foreign invader. In a way, it still shapes Venice which has its own language—not a dialect—and a sense of independence. People think Italy is an old country. It isn't. Venice only became part of a united Italy 150 or so years ago. It's still 'different', independent-minded, and resentful of undue foreign interference. This was even truer during WWII. I was very fortunate to explore the archives of an organization dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the resistance. Some of the stories of ordinary heroism told by those who took part are quite astonishing.

Young Paolo struggles with “thoughts and images and desires he didn’t want.” How early in the writing process did you decide to focus on his sexual identity?

I didn't start out thinking Paolo's sexuality was an issue. I just kept asking myself why his parents so wanted to keep him out of sight in the rough working-class quarter where they'd been forced to move. Then it occurred to me that perhaps he had no insight about himself, that they recognized that, loved him still but felt that hiding him was the only way to protect him.

Nonno Paolo writes, “they struggled to get by in the strange, artificial world that war had imposed upon Venice.” Do you see any comparison with that world and the strange world of pandemic lockdowns?

Absolutely! No travel, no map to the future, danger lurking everywhere and ready to come out of the blue. It must have felt much the same. I was so glad I finished the book when I did and set the final scenes in 2019 though! But it was quite spooky going through the revise process in total lockdown in the UK - unable to go anywhere, few shops open, trapped.

A character says, “I’m no citizen of Mussolini’s phony republic. There are two Italys at the moment.” After Mussolini, what did it take for Italians to feel like a unified nation again?

Italy is such a delightfully complicated country when it comes to identity. Venetians will decry the Milanese for being greedy, the Romans will criticize the Venetians for being cold. Then there'll be a parade with the national flag or an important match by the national soccer team. And everyone will have tears in their eyes for the love of their country and tell you it's the most beautiful and cultured place on earth. So, I think the general love for the country was there all along, but it was subverted quite deliberately by the divisive politics of fascism.

For two decades, you worked as a journalist. How do you assess journalism in the English-speaking world today?

The state of journalism today is very worrying—underfunded, cannibalised by the big tech giants, and riddled with idiotic trust issues propagated by people who deserve no trust at all. Journalism is there, as the old saw goes, to speak truth to power. But so many people no longer believe that truth. The trust needs to be rebuilt and the cannibalisation has to stop. 

Sponsored by