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Sweet Pizza is a beautifully rich story based in Brwn Bryn Mawr, a town in South Wales. This slow paced story is not action packed and electrifying but with its subtle approach provides much more than that. There is depth, layers and meaning interwoven throughout. The story is based around a failing high street where the recession has had a devastating impact upon the community. As the tale unfolds, the reader is enveloped and embraced into a Welsh-Italian family who are struggling to keep their café open. Joe Davis learns of his Italian heritage by hearing his family history through Nonno, his grandfather, and appreciates how the café is pivotal to their lives in more ways than he could ever have imagined. In a series of flashbacks from events of WW2 Joe knows that he must fight for his family and his community.
Before reading this story, I had no idea that Italians in Wales were interned after Mussolini joined forces with Hitler. Men who were once pillars of society were taken from their homes and held in prisoner of war camps and later deported to Canada along with German POWs. The Arandora Star was one such ship which transported Italians, German nationals and POWs to Canada but in 1940 a German U-Boat torpedoed the Arandora Star killing 486 people with Italians suffering the most casualties. Throughout the story, Joe's Grandfather recounts events of loss, heroes and bravery and how a community came together to protect one of its own.