Written by: Barbara Mancini
Translation[1] from Original written in Italian
Ten years of study and research have served Joseph Simonetti for a story that tells the events of the Twentieth Century.
Six volumes to not forget the journey of his family
Melbourne: Giuseppe (Joseph) Simonetti arrived Down Under with his father Michele in 1956, at eight years of age. For the five years that followed, together with his father and his uncle, he moved between the sugar cane crops of North Queensland and the orchards of the Murray Valley.
Despite starting his studies late, Simonetti has shown a great academic aptitude not only in high school, graduating in Pharmaceutical Sciences and embarking on a career in marketing and sales of highly technological instruments for research and development in the pharmaceutical and scientific fields, before opening a successful company in this field.
The passage of time has allowed Simonetti to ask himself questions, to the answer which he has found refuge in the reading of the classics and the study of Italian and European history, starting from the Crusades, in 1095. An in-depth study that he felt necessary, after realising that in Australia he had been exposed only to the historical events of the country and its intertwining with those of the United Kingdom. “After reading for 10 years, from 60 to 70, I began to write,” he said.
Simonetti has transformed his personal experience and that of his family into six volumes that tell of three generations whose events are inevitably intertwined with the historical and social context in which they have grown up. Through a series of research and conversations with his grandmother, in 1988 Simonetti began to collect material to reconstruct the family tree of his family, while since 2003 he has been writing down conversations with his father, with the aim of understanding and reporting the circumstances he experienced during his detention as a prisoner of war.
Continuous research has led Simonetti to complete, over five years, six books that narrate the succession of the main European historical events, from the rise of fascism to the Second World War and the post-war period, a period in which a large migratory flow from the Old Continent began to Australia, as well as the United States.
Even the author’s parents, with the aim of saving enough money to buy more land in their town of Francavilla, in Calabria, decide to split up for a few years, and the father, together with Joseph, embark for Australia.
An enormous work of historical and archival research, study and writing, and therefore culminated in the six books that Simonetti would now like to publish.
For those interested in learning more, you can visit the website www.italiajoe.com
[1] Original may be found at: https://ilglobonewspaper.com.au/publications/10/issue/1870/
