“A Time to Kill” as the Last Colonial Novel of Italian Literature

E. Flaiano’s novel “A Time to Kill” (1947) follows the patterns of colonial narrative characteristic of the fiction of Fascist Italy. At the same time, its plot structure unwittingly reveals obvious contradictions between the artificially created positive image of the conqueror and the unsightly reality of the colonial adventure. This gap has become a precedent for the postcolonial prose and criticism that has been developing in Italy since the 1960s. E. Flaiano’s novel has influenced the postcolonial tradition through an intensified authorial reflection, which has become one of the models for dealing with a difficult historical past.