Una juventud

The relationship of the adolescent Nino with a young French painter, with which this short novel begins, will take the reader along unexpected paths. The discovery of that forbidden love will cause the inevitable rejection of his loved ones and will expose a dark family secret that will resurface as if it were the curse pronounced by the lips of a corpse. Because, amid the idyllic landscape of Taormina, the death of his elderly grandmother and the application of his last will will precipitate events that will force the young idealist to mature quickly. In his vital learning process, he is forced to suffer confinement and loneliness in a seminary in Verona, but in that city he will also have the opportunity to live new relationships that will give rise to new feelings that will make him think that his destiny it might not be written. A youth is a learning novel with an open ending, which makes us reflect on the difficulties that stand in the way of those who seek to separate themselves from the conventions. In the story that it tells us, its author, Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, the decadent French writer and vividor, overturned some passages of his own existence: his love for Nino Cesarini whom he met in Rome when he was fourteen, his wedding frustrated with a French aristocrat after a huge scandal, the expulsion from the society to which she belonged in unique circumstances and, finally, the search for her own path and happiness.