Where You Didn't Take Me

Rome, 1965. A man and a woman leave their eight-month-old daughter in the Borghese gardens and disappear without a trace. A few days later, their bodies are found in the Tiber. In 2021, that same girl, now a renowned writer Maria Grazia Calandrone, embarks on a quest for the truth about the long-ago tragedy. Combining lyrical philosophical prose with documentary investigation, Calandrone reconstructs her mother's biography. Her book is a tribute to the complex fates of women from southern Italy in the mid-20th century and a poignant reflection on the crisis of empathy and the consequences of institutionalized cruelty.