"Do you know bicycle races?". Carnera offered that metaphor to the Basque, who didn't miss a word. 'There's a cyclist who breaks away and the group, the peloton, stays behind and chases. The faster we are, the more we'll force the others to raise the pace and hurry. This is our task: accelerate, break away. And the others behind'.

Carnera is the Commander, a big and burly man, a Spanish anarchist. The Basque - nicknamed for the big hat he wore - a Milanese partisan, twenty centimeters and twenty years younger. They are living through those days of Milan's Liberation, from April 23rd to early May, particularly April 29th, which Paolo Maggioni has transformed into "An Endless Sunday" (Feltrinelli, 208 pages, 18 euros). The story of Carnera and the Basque, but also of Ercole and the Doctor, Marta the tram driver and Colpani the Voice, Lady Stella and the twin children Zeno and Anita. A novel, perhaps a docunovel, half in color and half in black and white, fantasy welded to reality, imagination merged with history, a film inside the Luce Institute, between Mussolini and Petacci, Cardinal Schuster and Natalino Otto, La Scala Theatre bombed out and the Madonna finally stripped of drapes and coverings, Greppi mayor of Milan and Serafino custodian (head of protocol) of Palazzo Marino up to "gentle listeners, good afternoon from Milan, this is Nicolò Carosio speaking", impeccable coat and double-breasted jacket, up to a Savona lawyer in his fifties with a pipe, Sandro Pertini.

"Victory is always rare. We are the vanguard", the Commander replied, his face sharpened like that of certain riders when the wind beats against and the climb shows no sign of easing". Milan wins, the one described by tram route number 24, that of Isola and the Archbishop's palace, also that of Piazzale Loreto. The Milanese win, who after five years come out of their homes, old and young, women and veterans, repentant fascists and last-minute opponents, die-hards and turncoats, indifferent and curious. Life wins: "Happy kids who cry and laugh, greet, with a gaze already projected towards the future, who are enough to tell how it went and that the war is over".

"An Endless Sunday" is crossed by bicycles. It seems to see them, it seems to pedal. They have wind on them, incorporated. Those of autarchic traffic, those of couriers, those simulating normality, those sabotaging the occupation, those celebrating victory, those that will soon return to race with Bartali and Coppi, Zanazzi and Seghezzi. Old, tired, creaking, faithful, naturally happy.

Maggioni is a radio journalist, from Radio Popolare to Rai News 24, a voice that sneaks between alleys, enters kitchens, flushes out stories and narrates adventures, a voice that does not admit mute times - not even the shortest, because even the shortest stretch "endlessly". Here he changes register, accompanies, guides, directs, invents and reports, writes, and does so with simplicity and - as much as possible - with lightness, moving from past perfect to historical and imaginative present in a single chapter, if not the most beautiful, certainly the most compelling. And Maggioni should be proud of all this.