This issue entitled The Second World War and the Resistance in Italy: History, Public Uses, Narratives (1989-2025) looks at the current process of change of Italian identity paradigms, accentuated by the fact that, in the early 1990s, the political parties that had emerged from the Resistance either disappeared or underwent profound changes. On the literary side, we show how, from 1989 to the present day, war literature, the literature of the Resistance and accounts of the deportation have intersected, testifying to a 'return of the war' in literature. Among the 'shadows of war', the historiographical perspective raises the question of the effects of revisionism on our current interpretations of the past, the hiatus between historiography and the public uses of history, and the significance of the issue of victims today. Regarding literature, we explore the genres and forms of Italian literature that address twentieth-century history, marked in particular by the hybridisation of document and fiction.