Memorie di un Baro by Sasha Guitry

 Memorie di un Baro

by Sasha Guitry is enchanting, brilliant, plenty of great humor, irony and good smiles. I love the brevity, in a work where everything is told with clarity, efficiency. The book, released by Adelphi tells the story, pretty briefly, of a real cheater, en francais, a tricheur. The life of this poor man didn't start well at all, because his entire family, 11 people!!! were killed by mushrooms one night. Being in punishment because still little, what a luck! a sign of the destiny, escaped that horrible horror. The relatives who, at first took good care of him, were horrible people, so pretty soon left the house starting to work. I loved the description of the several places where he stayed at long: Paris, for example, a city that when want you and accept you, adopting you, won't pretend any changes from you, Monaco and the story of the arrival of Grimaldi. During the first world war he was saved by a young man. After the war, considering his capacities, started to work as croupier and understood pretty soon how to cheat at the table. It was an interesting excursus. Our man hadn't never taken in consideration the idea of...playing just for having some fun. He will start, when, one night recognized the boy who had saved his existence and had lost an arm during the first world war. They became friends starting to play every night at the casino, without to cheat. Oh, that adrenaline! And our man became incredibly obsessed by the simple idea of playing so that later, he told, didn't cheat anymore, simply, because he couldn't. He lost all his money, this one is just a detail but although in misery and with a little job, every month he deserved an amount of money for playing. The idea of playing, meeting everytime the case, the chance, and so the possibility or impossibility to win remains priceless.

This book at first appeared per chapters in a literary magazine called Marianne founded by Gaston Gallimard, where main collaboratirs were also Jean Giono, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Georges Simenon. 

The drawings in this book are the ones created at that time by Guitry. The book is translated wonderfully well by Davide Tortorella with an interesting afterword by Edgardo Franzosini.

Anna Maria Polidori