Patrizia Sambuco's Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas, and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture addresses cultural memory and its transformative influence on contemporary Italian culture. The collection discusses memory in a much broader sense than the social framework of Maurice Halbwachs’ classic work (i.e. memory as societal remembrance) by conceiving it as a cultural phenomenon where literature, architecture and films help shape its meanings. It therefore embraces a broad view on what constitutes memory and considers the interplay between past and present vital to any revisitation of the past in terms of collective and individual agency. As a result, its chapters focus on films, poetry, fiction, architecture, autobiographical writing, and social media as products of cultural transmission. The collection includes chapters centered on notions of continuity with the past, ideas of fragmentation, and divided memory and nostalgia.

Transmissions of Memory is divided into three sections. The first section is organised around the theme of memory as cultural transmission, opening with Martin McLaughlin's analysis of the works of Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco (pp. 3–19). McLaughlin examines the two authors’ critical writings on world literature and the different ways in which their fiction was transformed by these writings, in order to emphasise the interplay between past and present. He argues that both demonstrated awareness about how the literary works of the past continue to influence and retain value for contemporary writers and readers. In the subsequent chapter, Adele Bardazzi explores Eugenio Montale's treatment of his female characters by examining his revisions of the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus and that of Persephone. Focusing on the character of Mosca, Bardazzi demonstrates how Montale's ‘Eurydice-Persephonean archetype’ departs from traditional classifications of women (pp. 21–38). In chapter three, Charles Leavitt develops an analysis of Alberto Moravia's critique of the bourgeoisie in The Woman of Rome (1948), particularly for its hypocrisy under Fascism (pp. 39–54). In the section's final chapter, Maria Cristina Seccia illuminates changing contemporary Italian demographics by analysing Igiaba Scego's 2012 memoir through the lens of translation studies criticism (pp. 55–69).

The second section is organised around the theme of trauma and divided memory. It opens with John Foot's exploration of harrowing events in north-eastern Italy during the rise of Fascism and the Second World War in the light of this approach (pp. 73–89). The next chapter by Sandra Parmegiani, continuing the focus on north-eastern Italy, analyses Claudio Magris's novel Blameless (2015) (pp. 91–107). Katia Pizzi subsequently explores Trieste as an emblematic place of traumatic and divided memories by examining diverse examples of cultural memory, ranging from memorial sites to literature (pp. 109–123). In the following chapter, David Ellwood analyses literature and film from the postwar era to re-examine the Allies’ role in Italian memory. By incorporating witness accounts and recent historical research on the violence that women suffered during the liberation/occupation, he reconstructs a gendered history of the Italian liberation that reveals longstanding silences and challenges the media's often jubilant representation of the Allies (pp. 125–142). Finally, Torunn Haaland examines Elena Ferrante's La figlia oscura (2006), developing an interpretation that explores the themes of trauma and the fragmented memories that such experiences can cause, within a literary and psychoanalytic framework (pp. 143–160).

The third section, organised around the theme of memory as nostalgia, opens with Patrizia Sambuco's exploration of this theme as manifest in the remote agricultural Abruzzi setting and difficult mother-daughter relationship of Donatella Di Pietrantonio's Mia madre è un fiume (2011) (pp. 163–176). Exploring these strands in parallel allows her to discuss how Di Pietrantonio's work presents nostalgia as an emotion that renegotiates the present and the past rather than a backward-looking perception of the past. The subsequent chapter from Andrea Hajek challenges perceptions on the history and memory of feminism by establishing a distinction between nostalgia for feminism and feminist nostalgia: the former implies regret for the loss of the golden period of feminism symbolised by the 1970s movement, while the latter departs from this negative view and aims at utilising feminist values from the past within the present (pp. 177–195). In so doing, she examines Fra me e te (2013) by Mariella Gramaglia and Maddalena Vianello and Mia madre femminista (2015) by Marina Santini and Luciana Tavernini. In the final chapter, Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra examines discourse about nostalgia as a way to negotiate cultural memory in the field of social media and blogging (pp. 197–209). Her chapter, based on personal observations and interviews with an all-female Facebook group and cooking blog, focuses on how food and cooking are expressions of ties to past and current identities.

As a whole, Transmissions of Memory conveys an interpretation of memory transmission and its impact on contemporary Italian culture that places an emphasis on empowerment, resilience, and agency as key concepts for approaching and understanding the present and future. Each of the collection's three sections (which correspond to its three themes) receives relatively equal attention (the range being from three to five chapters per section). Further, each of the well-researched, interdisciplinary chapters presents clear arguments as well as a variety of perspectives. Consequently, academics in various fields in the humanities and social sciences will find something of interest in its pages. By way of its focus on cultural memory, Transmissions of Memory also demonstrates indirectly how identity and perceptions of identity are complex, flexible, and informed by multifarious processes, which are complicated by an increasingly globalising world. As such, it is a valuable contribution to academic literature on various interdisciplinary topics in areas such as cultural memory, trauma, and nostalgia.