A devastated planet, without Jews and without Israel. Daniela Santus’s dystopian novel

“Anyone who finds this map, please do not destroy it. It dates from 2025. Here there are rivers. Green valleys. And borders different from our own. There is also a country I have never heard of: Israel.” Daniela Santus, a lecturer in Geography at the University of Turin and author of countless academic essays, makes her debut in the field of fiction with a dystopian novel, clearly modelled on Orwell’s works. "Il Pozzo di Miriam: Una Distopia Geopolitica" (Edizioni Lindau) is set in 2057 in a horrific post-nuclear world. Thirty years after the ‘Great-Great War’, the planet lies devastated and is dominated by two totalitarian superpowers, rivals yet united in their determination to erase every trace of the past from the population’s memory. Following the Partition, nation-states have been dissolved and religions abolished. The Directorate, a pervasive and surveillance-based regime, occupies the whole of Asia and Europe, with Moscow as its capital. The official languages are Russian and – curiously – Italian (“Many suspected it had been chosen because Italians had adapted more quickly than others to the new system”). Other ‘regional’ languages are tolerated at a local level. The Covenant, on the other hand, unites the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. Here, English and Arabic are spoken; the police are only slightly less inquisitorial, but all women must be strictly veiled from head to toe. This is not for religious reasons (which are strictly forbidden) but for moral reasons, in the name of ‘civic integrity’.

The two massive nuclear explosions of 2027 – one in Siberia and the other in Central Europe – have, strangely enough, dried up rivers and lakes; even the seas have receded. The planet is gripped by drought, famine and destitution; the sky is perpetually grey and the air polluted. For many years now, people have eaten nothing but seaweed. Every week, tankers distribute water, which is strictly rationed and monopolised by the two superpowers, just like energy. On the other hand, cigarettes are handed out for free. Miriam’s Well is also the love story between Terennik and Johan, two brave young researchers who, on the secret advice of an elderly professor, begin to investigate the past. They thus discover that the Jews were blamed for the ‘Great-Great War’, and that a third nuclear device wiped out Israel along with all its inhabitants. The Jews, therefore, no longer exist, but strangely enough, people still hate them, accusing ‘scientists and Zionists’ of spreading ‘lab-created viruses’.

‘But how is that possible?’ the protagonists ask the old professor, bewildered. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? Today they’re accused of creating a virus. Thirty years ago, just as five hundred years ago, they were accused of everything: controlling the economy, manipulating governments, poisoning wells, using children’s blood to make festive cakes. The same old accusations. Updated, modernised, amplified by social media.” And on the eve of the Great-Great War, what happened?, the two researchers ask the wise old man, stunned. “Berg recounted how hatred had spread like a virus. On social media. In universities. In the streets. Protesters shouting ‘death to the Zionists’ without understanding the meaning of the word, yet claiming to be fighting ‘for peace’…”.