(by Marco Patricelli) (ANSA) - ROME, OCTOBER 31 - Life as a novel, that of Luciana Frassati Gawronska (1902-2007) who went through the twentieth century and brought beyond the threshold of the 21st century her legacy as a witness of an 'era', an unrepeatable season that re-emerges in the many facets of the accurate biography written by Marina Valensise, entitled "The Daredevil" (Marsilio, 480 pp., euro 19.00 euros).

Narrative elegance and depth of analysis are the main features of this "Novel of the Twentieth Century", which is based on energetic and lively writing and can describe an epic through an extraordinary woman. A woman to whom destiny seems to have given everything, except the joy of love and affection. She conquered what she had not through her temper, tenacity, intellect. Her father was Alfredo Frassati, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Turin-based "La Stampa" daily newspaper, and her mother was Adelaide Ametis.

She was her parents' third child. In her family, you could immerse yourself in stiff and conventional Savoyard Piedmont, which did not match wealth, opulence, and social role. Luciana was beautiful and intelligent, perhaps too beautiful and too intelligent for that beginning of the century in liberal Italy, stuck in its stereotypes. She studied, graduated, got to know other situations and horizons. When, after the WW2, her father was appointed ambassador to Germany by his friend Giolitti, she followed him and found herself in a 'parallel' universe: the world of power. Very close to her brother Pier Giorgio (1901-1924), who died when he was young and who would be beatified after a very long cause in 1990, she fell in love with a handsome officer. Her family takes care of having him sent elsewhere because they thought he was up to no good. Then the heart of Luciana, who seemed unattainable, was conquered by a noble Polish diplomat, Jan Gawronski (1892-1983). They got married, they had seven children (including the journalist and MP Jas Gawronski), but the marriage is in dire straits. In the difficult stage of the outbreak of World War II, Luciana showed a determination and courage that made her deserve the nickname of "daredevil". Valensise skillfully redesigns, with literary prowess and journalistic style, the incredible network of knowledge and relationships at every level that allowed Luciana Gawronska to act a bit like a secret agent, and a bit like a diplomat, to help civilians, politicians, friends trapped in Nazi-occupied and tormented Poland. Gawronska even addresses Mussolini, abhorred by his father, Nazis, and anti-Nazis, members of the Resistance. Her secret missions give you the jitters for the risks she ran with pride and courage, while he was hunted by the Gestapo throughout Europe, and while her marriage was splitting apart. At the end of the war, Luciana Frassati revealed her intellectual stature as a poet and writer, becoming an important and refined exponent of Italian (and international) culture, a friend of Arturo Toscanini and muse of his rival and opponent Wilhelm Furtwängler, remaining in close contact with the European intelligentsia. A determined and charming woman, who relives now in the pages of a book which is as engaging as the main character of a century-long story, in such an absorbing and well written literary work. (ANSA).