Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti's 1980 novel Amore mio uccidi Garibaldi destabilizes historical narration by re-imagining the accepted masculinist chronicles of Italian unification and by making central the female figure within that history. By framing this revision within the structure of an epistolary narrative, the author brings to the public stage the private lives that were once excluded from it. Bossi Fedrigotti's novel exemplifies a larger project of rewriting both the Risorgimento and the gender roles and experiences of this particular historical period. But perhaps its more significant innovation is to evoke the legacy of the unification in the tumultuous events of the 1960s and 1970s in Italy. The text acts as a mirror of Bossi Fedrigotti's own era, which like the Risorgimento, saw critical transformations in Italian culture and society.
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