The Red Horse (Italian: Il cavallo rosso, 1983) is an epic novel written by Eugenio Corti that follows an industrial family, the Rivas, in Nomana starting from the end of May 1940 through World War II and the new democratic Italy.
[1] The novel begins in late Spring 1940 in the town of Nomana (a literary depiction of Corti's hometown Besana in Brianza) where the inhabitants live on agriculture, farming, or work in the textile mill owned by the local industrialist Gerardo Riva, Ambrogio's father.
He thinks the only path out of the inhumanity of the war and post-war chaos is the Christian-Democratic order, which pillars are the Roman Catholic Church and the industrialist elite.
The danger of a communist-socialist takeover, which would include Italy into the other side of the Iron Curtain, is avoided by the Democrazia Cristiana led by Alcide De Gasperi winning the elections of 18 April 1948.
Corti writes his novel with a world view, which he borrows from Saint Augustine's book De Civitate Dei: man can build the city of God if he decides to rely on divine principles as a foundation for society.