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Wartime marriages between Allied servicemen and Italian women were historically rare, and most literary representations of Allied–Italian interactions focus on other forms of sexual relationships like prostitution or short-term affairs. Luciana Peverelli’s little-studied romanzo rosa, Sposare lo straniero (1946), offers a unique consideration on the problems of marriage between former enemies, providing a range of examples of what it meant for Italian women in post-war Italy to navigate cultural boundaries. At the same time, it suggests metaphors for Allied–Italian relations by using the characters as synecdoches for their respective nations, and, as such critiques stereotypes of Italians as passionate but parasitic and generally in need of redemption from fascism. Moreover, the novel meditates on its status as romanzo rosa, distancing itself from the tenets of the genre (namely its relation to the fable) and positioning itself in between vita and romanzo. Finally, reading the novel in context of better known ‘liberation’ narratives — Rossellini’s Paisà, Burns’ The Gallery and Hayes’ All Thy Conquests and The Girl on the Via Flaminia — this article shows how this generic hybridity lends itself to narrating love in ‘liberation’.
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