Canale Mussolini, at the same time, is also a novel about the building of a nation. It tells the story of the migrants who flowed into the newly opened region, the necessary human resource for the success of the project. It is this disparate and diverse amalgam of humanity that will create the nucleus of a new ethnicity, a new regional identity. Pennachi paints with a vivid brush all the struggles between the locals and the settlers, the constant efforts to preserve their old identity, but also the attempts to adjust to their new surroundings and reality, all the facets which are still present and alive in the divisions between the Cispadanos and the Moravis. All through the pages of the book, we can see the unfolding of the process of the integration of all of this disparate elements into a new mosaic by the constant mixing, marrying and friendship and the unavoidable fact of having to live side by side, a process which is a living argument against all the claims about the purity of nations or their ancient origins which are so often the kernel of official histories and ideologies.
Despite all that was underlined above, Canale Mussolini would hardly be a living and breathing work of art without the pulse provided by all the characters from the Peruzzi family. The Peruzzi embody the spirit, tradition, energy, perseverance, wisdom, bud also the cunning, superstition and delusions of the common folk, all the qualities and faults which have helped them survive through the centuries while empires and states rise and fall around them. The names of the male characters show the interminable link of the people and the history, starting with names of classical heroes such as Themistocles, Pericles and Paris and ending with the names of the modern heroes, the Italian politicians such as Turrati and Modigliani. The Peruzzi family lives on and from their ancestral land until they are forced out by the local Counts Zorzi Vila and have no other choice but to participate in the bonification project and the construction of Canale Mussolini, their whole story illustrating the continuity between the old and the new history. Furthermore, every Peruzzi male offspring takes part in every war which the state undertakes, but are also constitute the brute force and fist which brings fascism to power. The various conflicts in the broader family illustrate the division between the left and the right I society, something very similar to our Macedonian history. The secret behind the survival of the Peruzzi through all these trials and tribulations lies in the primary importance of family to them, loyalty which trumps all. This is why it’s not a problem to accept into the fold of the family strangers and ideological adversaries if they are ready to marry the Peruzzi women, even if they come with excess baggage in the form of bastard children.
The main ideology accepted and ingrained in their genes is patriarchy and its strict moral principles, regardless of the countless times they have been comically inconsistent in their application in their everyday life, a philosophy of life not uncommon to the common man. Yet, these principles are strictly adhered to when the family is in peril, which is the case when one of the Peruzzi wives Armida loses her husband Pericles, only to commit the unforgivable sin of adultery with her nephew Paris, making her a tragic Helen that causes the fall of the family Troy. She is banished from the family, sent into exile stripped of her children and a taboo is established for the disgraceful act to never be mentioned and to be buried deep in the family history. However, like all secrets, it is ultimately revealed to the readers when at the end of the novel we realize that this child of the passion between Armida and Paris is in fact the narrator, Don Pericles Peruzzi, who has become in the meantime a priest and a respectable member of society. He is the product of the overall history of the family, but also symbolizes the façade and veneer of respectability and the compromise belying post-war Italy who had swept under the rug all its secrets, taboos and contradictions which are just waiting for a favorable moment in history to appear and lead to new divisions.