Pedraglio’s second book with Book Works takes battles as a story-telling frame to focus on the small details and absurdities that characterise almost all of historical events and end up changing the course of their action. Mixed into the historical stories are personal accounts, trivial and idiosyncratic events that become elevated to the same status as those that affect history.

Each story comes with a drawing, a ‘potential stage’ for re-enacting the battle. Each story could be read as a script for a performance. Each performance could restage a battle, or simply a moment of everyday life that takes on, in that moment, the significance of a battle.

otherwise it would be too easy wouldn’t it?
talking about the present moment through the anecdotal
and instead no, it doesn’t work like that
while instead you can talk about the real, that’s possible, yes
or the real moment
which I keep on imagining as a glitch in ones biography
exposing the secret mechanics governing anyone’s life
like, in the case of the incident I’d read in his book, the going out with a woman and
the losing track of time and
the ending up sleeping at hers and
the getting involved in her domestic dynamics just enough to lose a train
consequently ending up saving his own life…
and that’s what I was telling to this new acquaintance of mine, now a friend
while trying to explain to her what it was that I was doing with my writings
the whole real moment thing