Gianrico Carofiglio Gianrico Carofiglio La Versione Di Fenoglio L’Estate Fredda (Fenoglio’S Version) (The Cold Summer)

Rosaria Carpinelli Consulenze Editoriali Spring 2019

[email protected] www.consulenzeditoriali.it @ConsulenzeEd Rosaria Carpinelli Consulenze Editoriali 2 fiction Gianrico Carofiglio Gianrico Carofiglio la versione di fenoglio l’estate fredda (Fenoglio’s Version) (The Cold Summer)

The real world has little to do with the plots of Inspired by a true story, The Cold Summer is detective novels or TV series. It really exists, Carofiglio’s most hard hitting novel yet. and it’s a dangerous place. The summer of 1992 is a cold one in southern Italy. The chilling Mafia violence currently Pietro Fenoglio – an old carabiniere who has sweeping Sicily has spread to Puglia, much to the seen it all – and Giulio – an intelligent, sensitive, consternation of Pietro Fenoglio, a local officer disoriented twenty-year-old – become friends in of the Carabinieri. the most unexpected way. Their meetings unfold Fenoglio, recently jilted by his wife, must between personal confidences and the story of simultaneously deal with his personal crisis and a formidable investigative experience, which the gang wars raging around Bari. The case is gradually turns into reflection on the method of stalled until a Mafia member, suspected of killing knowledge, on the fleeting concepts of truth and the son of a rival mobster, decides to collaborate. lie, on the very idea of power. The brutal killings are stopped but the mystery La versione di Fenoglio is a short, surprising of the boy’s murder must still be solved, leading Details essay on the art of investigation hidden in an Details A novel, Einaudi, February 2019, 168 pages Fenoglio into a world of deep moral ambiguity, A novel, Einaudi 2016, 354 pages engaging novel, with characters of extraordinary where the investigators are hard to distinguish authenticity: voices from a subtle darkness in from the investigated. Foreign rights sold in N°1 Bestseller which good and bad people, miserable and fair Australia and New Zealand (Text), ones are blending together. Denmark (HR Ferdinand), ❝ Hard-hitting, morally complex, Germany (Goldmann), and highly entertaining. A fascinating look France (Slatkine), About the author UK and USA (Bitter Lemon Press). Award-winning novelist Gianrico Carofiglio ❝ Carofiglio keeps getting better, at the Italian mafia, and the police ❞ is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and more honest and precise. And generous who battled them, in the early 1990s. ❝ The author occupies a niche the best-selling Guido Guerrieri crime series. towards his younger readers. ❞ Peter Swanson, author of All the beautiful lies similar to Erle Stanley Gardner His books have sold more than five million Corriere della Sera and John Grisham. ❞ copies in Italy and have been translated into ❝ The Cold Summer is a masterpiece, a novel that not 27 languages worldwide. Times Literary Supplement @GianricoCarof ❝ As always in Carofiglio’s novels, only narrates Italy, but also the modern world. A novel there are multiple reading levels. ❞ that should be mandatory in school, to fight against ❝ Hard-boiled and sun-dried ❞ Io Donna the epidemic of corruption and mediocrity. in equal parts. ❞ Eugenia Rico, author of El beso del canguro Financial Times ❝ In this manual for the good detective we end up finding the instructions to crack life. ❞ photo © Basso Cannarsa © Basso photo la Repubblica

❝ Carofiglio acrobatically stays between novel and essay. ❞

Corriere del Mezzogiorno fiction 4 5 fiction Benedetta Cibrario il rumore del mondo A magnificent novel, a precious tapestry, an exquisite literary (The Sound of the World) voice, a towering achievement.

The Sound of the World is a powerful A beautifully drawn portrait of Italy unlike any other. novel, a finely documented account of the pivotal and tumultuous period of Summer 1838. A young Englishwoman, Anne Bacon, the daughter of a rich silk Italian Risorgimento – in its rebirth merchant, is travelling through France to join her Italian husband, Prospero of art, history and culture as well as Vignon, an officer in Turin. On the journey, in the company of her chaperone politics – like Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s Theresa Manners and her maid Eliza, Anne falls ill with smallpox. She survives, The Leopard, but from a different but is disfigured. Her husband welcomes her with coldness, and the passion viewpoint: here the story is told between them fades. through the eyes and expectations of three Englishwomen, travelling to Italy, To the intrepid Theresa Manners, a devourer of travel guides, Turin is the gateway in the twofold sense of a geographical to the wonders that have enchanted travellers on the Grand Tour. A new life and destination and a historical reality. new adventures are waiting for her and she will soon leave her protegée Anne in It reveals the reasons for the fascination the dark and solitary halls of Palazzo Vignon. that Italy exerts on travellers with the same dramatic sweep and richness of Ever more distant from her husband, Anne is invited by Casimiro, Prospero’s Details aging father, to visit the family’s country house. Far from Turin, she discovers A novel, Mondodori, October 2018, 756 pages detail as E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread. the landscape at the foot of the Alps filled with burgeoning industry and meets ❝ An unconventional point of view on the Enrico, an entrepreneur who is building a modern silk factory. The young man Risorgimento: Anne Bacon, a melancholy and Anne share a passionate imagination. and industrious Englishwoman in ❝ Cibrario’s literary adventure a small aristocratic Piedmont, is an has the wider scope of a nineteenth This is a time when words such as independence, freedom and the constitution ❞ original character capable of recording century novel. are circulating feverishly. King Charles Albert is devoured by doubts and fears. La Stampa and witnessing every impulse of an Casimiro is torn between loyalty to his king and contempt for a weak and extraordinary historical evolution in the ❝ Benedetta Cibrario reawakens an era. ❞ vacillating ruler. Meanwhile as industry grows, newspapers spread fresh ideas. very heart of an archaic world. ❞ Robinson Giorgio Ficara, presenting Il rumore del Many of the liberals who demand political reforms are aristocrats convinced that mondo for the Premio Strega shortlist an absolute monarchy must end. Times are vibrant with the energy of reform and Foreign publishers of Benedetta Cibrario’s books change, while the noise of new machinery blends with the drums of war. The Germany (Rowohlt), Greece (Oceanida), The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), Portugal (Porto Editora), Romania (Humanitas), Serbia (Plato Books). story of Charles Albert as man and king ends in defeat but the new Italy, unified and independent, is at hand. photo © Dario Fusaro © Dario photo About the author Benedetta Cibrario was born in Florence and lives between Italy and England with her husband and four children. She is the author of Rossovermiglio (2007, Premio Campiello 2008), Sotto cieli noncuranti (2009, Premio Rapallo Carige 2010), Lo Scurnuso (2011),

L’uomo che dormiva al parco (2012)., Il rumore del mondo (2018). fiction 6 7 fiction Francesco Piccolo l'animale che mi porto dentro the new novel By the strega prize winner Francesco Piccolo (The Animal I Carry Within Me)

About the author In a world that has always been governed Francesco Piccolo was born in Caserta and lives in Rome. He is the author of by men, understanding males is the only Scrivere è un tic. I metodi degli scrittori (1994), Storie di primogeniti e figli unici key to looking ahead. (1996), E se c’ero, dormivo (1998), Il tempo imperfetto (2000), Allegro occidentale (2003), L’Italia spensierata (2007), La separazione del maschio (2008), Momenti di trascurabile felicità (2010), Il desiderio di essere come tutti (2013, Premio Strega How many things is a man made of? 2014), Momenti di trascurabile infelicità (2015), L’animale che mi porto dentro photo © Andrea De Meo © Andrea photo Sensitivity, ferocity, eroticism and (2018). He has written award-winning works for cinema, theater and radio, and is a regular contributor to the Corriere della Sera. He scripted the tv series My romanticism, weakness, power. It is not the Brilliant Friend, based on the international bestseller by Elena Ferrante, and the old game of opposites, but the deep root movie by Daniele Luchetti Momenti di trascurabile felicità, based on his books. of one of the cornerstones of our society. Momenti di trascurabile felicità is now a film directed by Daniele Francesco Piccolo recounts, as only he can, Luchetti and scripted by Francesco Piccolo the life of many through one. The pains of love, even the most ❝ What I kept compressed inside me – during Foreign publishers devastating pain, sometimes end when gym class or watching Maciste movies, or some of Francesco Piccolo’s books it’s lunch time: “I have said to myself, and nights when I went to bed scared – was the Albania (Fjala), Bulgaria (Ciela), to humanity, with a single unconscious anguish of having to prove I was a man. To show Croatia (Hena), Egypt (Beba it to everyone, every hour, every day, every week. Editions), France (Denoël), Germany Details gesture, hence instinctive, hence absolute: (Insel), Macedonia (KSC), A novel, Einaudi, November 2018, 236 pages I am hungry. And somehow, I also told And every time I did, I had to take account of The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), myself something that would stay with me my inadequacy. In the end, I am an individual Russia (Corpus), Serbia (Laguna), Spain (Anagrama). for the rest of my life: I can do it.” who carries a group inside him, like a beast that continues to follow him. ❞ The story is turbulent, serious, funny, ❝ Merciless and moving, we keep ruthless and sly. The material, as always, reading it, hungry for one more story is life. The object, a central nexus of the until the last page, until the last word: world in which we live. If Il desiderio di that’s where everything begins, essere come tutti (Wanna Be Like Everyone) like in all the great novels. ❞ TuttoLibri was the story of the impact of politics on the individual sphere (and vice versa),this ❝ A book of rare freedom, fierce. ❞ novel is about how to be a male – any Rivista Studio male as well as a specific one – in our contemporary world. The need to belong ❝ An extraordinary reflection of what to the group and the risk of being an ❞ we are and we would rather not be. individual, the school as a battlefield, the Corriere della Sera link between brutality and fear, Sandokan ❝ It’s not a novel, it’s not an essay, and Malizia, pimples and sex, love and it’s not an autobiography, it’s a story marriage, selfishness and tenderness: it that creates the illusion of a reality takes considerable courage to investigate that is more real than reality itself. ❞ the depth of the masculine, that is, if it

Il Foglio exists. fiction 8 9 fiction Giancarlo De Cataldo Giancarlo De Cataldo al ba nera L'agente del caos (Black Dawn) (The Agent of Chaos)

Giancarlo De Cataldo explores the abyss of the present, the collective nightmare haunted by men who hate women, by sadistic torturers A brave and brilliant novel, in keeping with the and merchants of human flesh, by powerful full maturity of an author like Giancarlo De Leopards and new masters. When hatred Cataldo. becomes the best business, only the first ray of a ruthless dawn can illuminate the darkness that surrounds us.

They say times have changed. But Italy always A fairly successful author from Rome publishes stays the same, showing off its ferocious grin. a short novel inspired by the life of Jay Dark, an Commissioner Alba Doria knows it well. American agent provocateur who flooded the Suspended between light and darkness, Alba revolutionary movements of the 1960s with drugs suffers from a deadly personality disorder. They in order to destroy them. The author is contacted call it the Dark Triad, a mixture of narcissism, by a lawyer named Flint, who has read the book sociopathy and manipulative ability, capable and challenges him to rewrite it. Because the real Details Details A novel, Rizzoli, April 2019, 320 pages of inspiring the worst criminals or supporting story of Jay Dark is very different. And he can A novel, Einaudi, April 2018, 220 pages those who fight them. So when the ghost of a recount the story because “He was there”. murderer, who everyone believed dead, returns Like a classic thriller by Conrad, Flint’s story to strike, Doria will have to deal with secrets reveals an amazing international scenario, a Foreign rights soldi in from the past. And she’s not the only one: the true Wunderkammer traversing thirty years of France (Métailié), Germany (Folio Verlag). Blonde Man and Dr. Sax will be by her side Western history, with rogue agents, former Nazis, Foreign rights once again, ex-boyfriend and best friend of traffickers, terrorists, honest cops and corrupt [email protected] those distant days: impetuous and tormented ones, sex and ideals, rock concerts, and lots and A bout the author Giancarlo De Cataldo was born in Taranto. policeman, the first; Secret Services official and lots of drugs. He lives and works in Rome where he’s a judge jazz virtuoso, the latter. It will be up to Alba to Highly original, enthralling, full of over-the-top of the First Appeal Assizes Court. His most tie up loose ends while Rome is transformed characters, in L’agente del caos, reality and fiction famous novel is Romanzo Criminale (2002), into a dangerous metropolis, populated by ceaselessly intertwine, for the first time giving that became a movie directed by Michele Placido and an equally successful TV series, outcasts who live in the slums, where the law of voice – without any moralizing or hypocrisy – to directed by Stefano Sollima (also director of the strongest is the only law. the secret and Dionysian self-consciousness of an TV series Gomorra, based on Roberto Saviano’s entire generation. novel). The series was broadcast by Channel 4 in UK. The english translation of the novel was published in 2015 by Corvus Publishing. ❝ He is the author of crime and historical novels, The young people wanted to essays, including two books based on his more change the world. Jay Dark wanted than 30-years experience as a criminal judge, to destroy the young people. short stories, graphic novels, and scripts for In any case, the world was never cinema and TV networks. His novel Suburra, co-written with the the same again. Because no evil journalist Carlo Bonini, has been adapted for is truly and exclusively evil, cinema by director Stefano Sollima and it is and the world moves forward, available worldwide on Netflix. ❞

ph © Stefano Cioffi © Stefano ph propelled by conflicting powers. fiction 10 11fiction Gino Vignali Gino Vignali ci vuole orecchio la chiave di tutto (A Very Good Ear) (The Key to Everything)

Two whole new cases for commissioner The great tradition of Italian comedy meets Costanza Confalonieri Bonnet and her the dark side of Rimini, in a hilarious yet team. gripping crime story.

It all begins with a suitcase. Captain A homeless man, a black man, a stripper: a Valentino Costanza’s fishing boat pulls chain of crimes that seems sinisterly logic. It it out the sea off the coast of Rimini, on looks like the killer that in just a few hours a fine May day. The suitcase contains a dispersed three corpses throughout the city small heap of bones, that look like those of Rimini, has some kind of “cleanse” in of a child. There’s only one thing to mind. do: call the homicide squad, led by the But the deputy commissioner Costanza irresistible deputy commissioner Costanza Confalonieri Bonnet, the most beautiful Confalonieri Bonnet. investigator that has ever set foot in Police Details Just a creepy cold case? Maybe, but less Headquarters (calendars included) is not Details A novel, Solferino, March 2019, 208 pages than forty-eight hours later, another case convinced: according to her the ideological A novel, Solferino, May 2018, 240 pages opens up, and it’s a hot one. It involves an trail is not the right one. Otherwise why A bout the author unhappy heiress, a mysterious Foundation would Vagano – the mysterious tramp that Gino Vignali was born in Milan. His name and a law firm to be handled very carefully. looked like a character out of a Fellini film – has been linked to that of Michele Mozzati for a long time, a partnership that was In other words it’s a mess, and to sort it bother to swallow a key before he died? That, born during the university years and that ❝ A novel with the plot of a Netflix out Costanza will need allies, including his of course, is the key to everything. made them famous as Gino & Michele. series and the direction of Federico mother’s partner Leo Liverani, a comedian Together they have achieved great success Fellini. ❞ in different fields: publishing, journalism, and a gentleman, and Captain Valentino The first narrative challenge of Gino Vignali and entertainment (theater, cinema Sette - Corriere della Sera himself, who makes Costanza’s heart skip is a novel that combines tension and comedy, and television) and they have published several beats. many books of fiction and non-fiction, twists and atmosphere. It’s a book in the great including Anche le formiche nel loro piccolo In this new episode of the captivating tradition of Italian humour, with serious s’incazzano (1991), Neppure un rigo di thriller series by Gino Vignali, the head social and media satire in the background, cronaca (2000) e Le cicale (2004-2010). They are curators of the Enciclopedia inspector Orlando Seneca Appicciafuoco, endowed with a unique style that possesses universale della battuta (2009). the special agent Cecilia Cortellesi, and grace and craftsmanship together with all superintendent Emerson Leichen Palmer the freshness of an improvisation. Vignali Balducci, get back in the game alongside knows how to entertain the reader in an Costanza. inexhaustible play of language: from surgical Two fast-paced plots intertwine in a jokes to pyrotechnical dialogues. A smart Fellinian Rimini, exposing secrets of dark comedy, which marks the debut of a the high society and ambiguous circus seductive group of characters destined for atmospheres, in the seductive scenery of many adventures. After the winter, spring is

the Grand Hotel in springtime. coming. fiction 12 13fiction Roberto Perrone Annibale Canessa - the series

Annibale Canessa is a former Colonel of the Italian Carabinieri, also known as the “Army”, the most widespread police force on the Italian territory. Back in the days, between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, he was the brightest member of the anti-terrorism squad, despite his young age. He moved quickly and ruthlessly to bring terrorists to justice, especially those from the bloody organization of the Red Brigades. At the peak of his career, Canessa forces himself in a kind of self-exile, after realizing it’s impossible for him to keep fighting his personal war on terrorism. Canessa, tired of the political games that determined the decisions within the Carabinieri, returns to live in Liguria, the region where he was born, in a small village by the seaside called San Fruttuoso, reachable only by sea or on foot, where he runs a restaurant La seconda vita L'estate degli inganni L'ultima volontà with his aunt. But he will be back in action after 25 years when in the first chapter of di Annibale Canessa (Canessa 2) (Canessa 3) the saga, La seconda vita di Annibale Canessa, his brother and a former terrorist that (Canessa 1) (The Summer of Deceits) (The Last Will) he had arrested back then, are found dead together, murdered in a street of Milan. (The Second Life of Rizzoli, 2018, 368 pages Rizzoli, 2019, 416 pages The second novel is titled L’estate degli inganni, the third L’ultima volontà. Annibale Canessa) The peculiarity of these novels, very different from other titles in the Italian thriller Rizzoli, 2017, 420 pages scene, is that they take up the themes and the mysteries of a season in Italian history that is still unexplored by fiction: the former colonel, who receives no support by Foreign rights sold in Uk - English world rights the State but only operates with a well-knit team of experts, investigates the Years (Pushkin Press) of Lead and tackles cold cases related to that period, still full of shadows and red ❝ Always being one step ahead: ❞ herrings. TV rights optioned that’s Annibale Canessa’s strength. Corriere della Sera ❝ The author, Roberto Perrone, was a direct witness – at that time he attended Perrone knows how to get the reader’s attention. ❞ ❝ university in Genoa, one of the cities that have been most affected by terrorist If the reader manages to quit the last 80 pages, Il Giornale it only could be a matter of life and death. ❞ violence – and he created an archive of essays and articles on the events of those La Stampa years. In each book there are references to real cases, such as the particularly ❝ An impressive firepower... heinous murder of a magistrate in front of his children, a terrible massacre in a the best noir yet on the years of ❝ So rich in tones that I'd love to read it again. ❞ station (which even though it’s never explicitly mentioned in the novel it’s clearly terror in Italy. ❞ Amica the bombing at Bologna Central station, dated 2nd August 1980), the irruption in Corriere della Sera a Red Brigades refuge that marked the turning point in the fight against terrorism,

the resurgence of terrorism in the second half of the 80s. About the author Roberto Perrone was born in Rapallo and lives in Milan. He writes about sport, Annibale Canessa investigates those years and the controversial episodes, that food and travel. He is the author of Zamora (2003), La lunga (2007), Averti were never solved or were solved in the wrong way at the time, with an Edmond trovato ora (2008), Numero 1 (2008), the biography of Gigi Buffon, goalkeeper and captain of the Italian national football team, La ballata dell’amore Dantes spirit, not just to avenge innocent people, but also to know the truth. In salato (2009), Occhi negli occhi (2011), La cucina degli amori impossibili these novels, as in the Count of Montecristo, many who in those years were guilty (2013), Manuale del viaggiatore goloso (2015), La seconda vita di Annibale of terrible crimes, later change their lives, obtaining positions of prestige in Italian Canessa (2017) and L’estate degli inganni (2018), L'ultima volontà (2019). society, climbing on the ladder of political and economic power. But their prestige www.perrisbite.it

@Perri57 fiction and wealth are stained with blood. fiction 14 15 Roberto Perrone Roberto Perrone Lultima volontà L'estate degli inganni (The Last Will) (The Summer of Deceits)

❝ Perrone knows how to get the reader’s attention. ❞ A second chapter full of mysteries and suspense. Il Giornale

A former Italian terrorist once belonging to Taking a risk has never been a problem for Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) admits on his death former Carabinieri officer Annibale Canessa: it bed that he did not perpetrate the massacre for wasn’t a problem when he was the head of the which he served decades in prison. He was not anti-terrorism squad in Italy in the Seventies, the one who brutally killed three carabinieri in and it isn’t now that he’s back in action. the Emilian countryside back in 1986. And his With a sidelong glance that can either incinerate backwards confession means just one thing: or seduce you, Annibale “Tank” Canessa seems the real killers are still at large. And they are changed now that he shares his life with Carla powerful. They have misled the investigation, Trovati, the young, irresistible journalist that soiled the waters, created a labyrinth of mirrors stole his heart. where the truth seems unattainable. A new case But for those who believe in justice, nothing can for Annibale “Tank” Canessa, former Colonel ever really change. So when the Mossad provides Details Details of the Carabinieri Army. He will not stop the evidence that could reopen the old case of a A novel, Rizzoli, April 2019, 416 pages A novel, Rizzoli, February 2018, 364 pages until he gets justice, and that is why he brings terrorist attack which took place in Italy during ❝ An impressive firepower... his team together one more time: the faithful a summer in the early Eighties, Canessa decides the best noir yet on the years Marshal Ivan Repetto, Piercarlo Rossi, known to investigate. of terror in Italy. ❞ as Vampa, billionaire and aspiring man of action, Dark shadows from the past come back for one Corriere della Sera the atypical hacker Matteo Bernasconi. With last lethal showdown and Annibale finds himself their help he faces an investigation that has its tangled up in Cold War secrets and unresolved ❝ So rich in tones that I'd love roots in the darkest shadows of the Resistance business. As he investigates the international to read it again. ❞ and the Liberation from Nazi-Fascism, in the enigmas and tries to uncover all the red herrings Amica troubled years after the Second World War, and of that bloody summer, he’ll end up putting at extends them until today, in the Roman palaces stake everything he cares about the most, in the of politics and power. A seventy year long blood name of the truth. trail, studded with victims and secrets. Everyone could be guilty, no exceptions made. Roberto Perrone La seconda vita di Annibale Canessa (The Second Life of Annibale Canessa)

Mystery and suspense, plot twists and surprises, and the evil of political terrorism in the Seventies. And a wonderful new hero.

Details

A novel, Rizzoli, February 2017, 420 pages fiction 16 17 Massimo Coppola Beatrice Masini un piccolo buio più grande la paura (A Little Darkness) (Greater The Fear)

There’s a little darkness hidden in everyone’s In the great tradition of short stories by heart, and it’s always about to expand and contemporary women writers, a new collection swallow everything, like a screen going black. devoted to childhood from the wonderful and exquisite voice of Beatrice Masini, novelist, translator, beloved author of children’s books 1936. Mussolini is in Milan to celebrate the widely translated. magnificent fortunes of the Italian people and he’s speaking at the inauguration of Palazzo Childhood is a time of loneliness and possibilities. Vittoria, a building erected according to the Everything is brand new, every day a discovery. most modern criteria. A young director, who’s Adults are there to protect, to explain, to set job is to film the ceremony, is soon distracted boundaries, but there is somehow a blind spot in by a beautiful and restless girl, with whom he’ll their perspective: by looking at the world from end up exploring the immaculate apartments of their height they miss so many details. And these Palazzo Vittoria. Immaculate except for a blood details are what matters most to children: events stain they find near the elevators. and things that stand up in their visual field, that Details Details A novel, Bompiani, March 6 2019, 272 pages The structure of this novel is simple: that moment are important, sometimes overwhelming, often A short stories collection, Marsilio 2019, 224 pages from 1936 is just the first of many images misunderstood. ❝ A novel that reads like a movie and that will come to life at Palazzo Vittoria. Once In seven stories and a novella Beatrice’s children ❝ The complexity of childhood. ❞ photographs reality, always balanced every decade, since then until a near future, the happen to be happy, just for a while, or are La Stampa between past and present. ❞ narrator places his gaze on those rooms where sorrowfully unhappy, sometimes abused by ❝ Io Donna new protagonists cross each other’s paths. adults because of too much love or too much Masini has an exact and profound prose. ❞ About the author Leda, Carlo, Chiara, Luca, Marco, Vittoria: we hatred. Allegra, Byron’s daughter, longing for is an author, film and documentary writer and see them young first, then mature and finally love and attention, sent away to a monastery; la Repubblica director, editorial strategist and creator. As old, their children are born and they resemble Ottavio, looking back at the time when he and About the author scriptwriter and director, he produced several award- their parents, a hundred years of imaginary lives his brother shared a playhouse, before war came Beatrice Masini is a successful writer of winning documentaries and feature films. He has intertwine and then come undone. and Pietro decided to join the Resistance; Nina, books for children and teens, translated into been a host, a writer and a director on several MTV But above all this novel is about a key place of scared by the monstrous wave of kidnappings over 20 languages, and the Italian translator programs and in 2004 he co-founded publishing of the Harry Potter saga by J. K. Rowling. house Isbn Edizioni, where he was editorial director modern life, the apartment building, which and killings of her peer in the seventies, set In 2004 she received the prestigious Andersen for ten years. He’s a contributor to many newspapers becomes the theater of a possible nékyia, the to defend herself by evoking her heroes from Prize as best children’s author of the year. and magazines and he’s been editor-in-chief at Rolling ancient rite meant to bring back to earth the tv shows and beloved books for help; Achille, Among her works for the adult readership, Stone Italia. He has a son and lives in Milan. ghosts of the dead: each of them gives us his wishing to murder a ferocious smaller kid who is Tentativi di botanica degli affetti (2013) and I @massimocopppola fragment of public life and of private destiny, slaughtering starfish at the beach. nomi che diamo alle cose (2016). they force us to come to terms with the century Beatrice Masini – as a fierce and poised we come from, and then they leave room for a tightrope walker, lighthearted and sweet – future where it might still be possible to build describes with fine and sharp prose a world and something new. a time when children feel immortal, life is made of fire, water, wind and air, and adulthood is too far away to offer any explanation. No fear of wasps, ants and bumblebees, but greater the Boccon-Gibod © Isabelle ph

fiction love, greater the fear. 18 19fiction Teresa Ciabatti Helena Janeczek matrigna Cibo (A Flawed Mother) (Food)

A story of a mystery, a novel about the roles Food is memory, sickness, nostalgia, identity, that we never cease assigning to ourselves: refuge, self-love and self-harm. father, mother, brother, sister.

Andrea is a special child: blond hair, blue I can’t stand people who do not take food eyes, as sweet as can be. His sister Noemi is seriously, said Oscar Wilde. Today it has become an ordinary child: brown hair, brown eyes, a one of the main occupations, obsessions, graceless body. But what happens when the delusions; the kitchen, along with the hygienic special child disappears during the Carnival ordeal of what is healthy or not, is the buzzing party? A stranger, a thief of other people’s soundtrack of our days. Taking food seriously, children, a human trafficker, a relative, a very however, is another matter. Some people do it close relative? And his sister, shouldn’t she have without even trying: like Elena, the woman who held him by the hand? Questions for which a tells her own story in this book, and Daniela, the Details nine-year-old has no answer, but which remain masseuse she turns to, to engage in a serious diet A novel, Solferino, October, 208 pages and remodel her body. What they share during Details inside her despite her escape into the city, A novel, Guanda, March 2019, 288 pages university, friends, boyfriend, work. Despite a their sessions is something profound. normal life. For each dish they name, for each recipe or About the author About the author And that unshakable past can come back all of a tradition they recall, there is a memory, a Helena Janeczek was born in Munich but Teresa Ciabatti was born in Orbetello sudden, with just a phone call. Noemi is recalled friendship, a love, a family ritual. The pea cream she’s been living in Italy for the past thirty and lives in Rome. Writer and years. She made her debut with a collection screenwriter, she is the author of the back to the village where it all began and where and the krapfen at Ulrike’s parties, who back in of poems in German, Ins Freie (1989) and novels Adelmo, torna da me (2002), that it all ended. But instead of a mother who is Munich, when Elena was a child, was anorexic in 1997 she published Lezioni di tenebra, became the movie L’estate del mio primo defeated and graying, she finds a frivolous because of her desire for perfection; the Sunday her first work of fiction written in italian bacio (2006), directed by Carlo Virzì, blond woman who, together with a young lunches at Daniela’s farmer grandmother and (Premio Bagutta Opera Prima and Premio I giorni felici (2008), Il mio paradiso è friend, goes out at night, attends clubs, plans the salty herrings that awaken in Elena the Berto). She is the author of Cibo (2002, deserto (2013), Tuttissanti (2013), La più 2019), Le rondini di Montecassino (2010, amata (2017), Matrigna (2018). She is a trips and changes of home. Who is Luca and memory of te Saturday kiddushes in her Jewish Premio Napoli, Premio Pisa and Premio regular contributor to Corriere della Sera. what binds him to an archived investigation, to family, and above all remind her of her father, Sandro Onofri), La ragazza con la Leica @teresaciabatti a child never found? who disappeared too early. (2017, Premio Bagutta and Premio Strega). With her uncomfortable and irresistible voice, At the end of a novel that mixes and unites @helenajaneczek Teresa Ciabatti immerses us in the story of individuals and cultures, as does food, Helena a mystery, with a novel about the roles that Janeczek still reserves the space for reflection we never cease assigning to ourselves: father, on a tragedy of our years – the fall of the World mother, brother, sister. Where the family Trade Centre – through the stories of the chefs unwraps all its obsessions, manifesting itself who worked in the towers. first as a refuge, then as a condemnation. An intense novel that intertwines narration and ph © Pasquale Di Blasio © Pasquale ph reflections, to recount restless men, common and complex women, exiles or nomads, a whole ❝ Who does mommy love more? the humanity with its sweetness and bitterness, strangers asked in the police station memory and oblivion.

the day my brother disappeared. ❞ fiction 20 21fiction Melania G. Mazzucco Paola Mastrocola la lunga attesa dell’angelo leone (The Long Wait for the Angel) (Leone)

To celebrate Tintoretto’s 500 years since his birth, in Fall 2018 a gigantic exhibition has opened in The spectacle of the world in the hands of a child. Venice (Palazzo Ducale and Accademia), in many european cities and now at the National Gallery in Washington. Melania G. Mazzucco has also created and written the docu-film Tintoretto. A Rebel in Venice, a Sky Arts original production to A mother and her son live in neighborhood be broadcasted in 60 countries all over the world. called the Bussolo. It could be anywhere in any contemporary city. She, Katia, is a single In Venice, toward the end of the 16th century, thirty-six-year-old woman, absorbed by her Jacomo Robusti – otherwise known as Tintoret- work, separated from her husband, with little to – defends his achievements by any means. He money and little time, always running, hanging thrives on competition, bodily threat, and de- from nebulous dreams that she does not dare ceit, while also finding inspiration for his paint- to dream to the end. He, Leone, is a shy lonely, ings in the extraordinary physical world that six-year-old boy, thin as a reed. Details surrounds him.Tintoretto’s illegitimate daughter One day, in the midst of all the people and A novel, Rizzoli 2008, 418 pages cars passing by, under the blinking lights of Details Marietta is his most perfect creation. A gifted A novel, Einaudi, October 2018, 228 pages Premio Bagutta 2009 the Christmas trees, he starts to pray. And his Premio Scanno 2009 musician and painter in her own right, Marietta Premio Biblioteche di Roma 2009 mother discovers, with amazement and shame, About the author is a woman of acute intelligence, boundless crea- Paola Mastrocola is the author of La Premio Tobino Viareggio 2011 Writer of the year tivity, and clear vision. From her illicit origins that he does it often, almost everywhere. He goes off on his own, gets down on his knees, gallina volante (Premio Calvino, 2000), to her practice of dressing as a boy in order to Palline di pane (2001, ashortlisted at Premio The novel on the life observe her father’s world unrestricted, her life and prays. On the street, at the cinema, in Strega), Una barca nel bosco (2014, Premio of an extraordinary artist. takes on a mythical aura. the bathroom. He prays when worried, when Campiello), La scuola raccontata al mio cane The mystery of love and art in Italy’s he misses his grandmother and the games he (2004), Che animale sei? (2007), Più lontana Mazzucco explores the love between Tintoretto della luna (2007), La felicità del galleggiante most fascinating city. and Marietta to the end. Her confident prose played with her. Or when he wishes for a kiss. Or when he wants to help someone. Word (2010), Non so niente di te (2013), L’esercito draws the reader deep into the mystery of paint- delle cose inutili (2015), La passione ribelle circulates quickly. Leone has become “the child (2015), L’amore prima di noi (2016), Leone ❝ A hard-to-forget female character. ❞ ing, into the world of two unforgettable artists, and into the mood of Italy’s most fascinating city, who prays,” the scandal of the school, of the (2018). Her books have been translated in l'Espresso entire neighborhood. Many deride him, but France, Germany, Spain and Latin America, itself on the edge of an inevitable collapse. Portugal, Turkey and Japan. Foreign rights soldi in many, too, begin to confess their wishes. Just Bulgaria (Uniscorp), Denmark (Tellerup), Finland (Avain), France (Flammarion), Germany (Knaus Bertelsmann), like life, Leone either delivers on requests Spain and Latin America (Anagrama). or disappoints, makes dreams come true or leaves them unexplained. Paola Mastrocola has written a story at once realistic and magical, in

which everyone changes without knowing why. © Giliola Chistè ph An essential and profound novel, in which every line can surprise at both the human and literary level – until a downpour, a smaller and gentler analogy of the universal flood, one which does not destroy anything but renews

and softens the color of things. fiction 22 23fiction Patrizia Cavalli Valerio Magrelli con passi giapponesi la vicevita (Japanese Steps) (The Vice-Life)

A “vice-autobiography”, a small encyclope- ❝ If poetry, as someone has said, is the only dia of the journey, capable of revealing the possible science, this poet’s prose reveals tragicomic aspects of human existence and figurative, speculative and satirical abilities. ❞ civil coexistence.

“In these pages, we find the parallel and backward moral story that has accompanied for decades Encounters with commuters at dawn, the work of one of the greatest contemporary berthmates, card players, acquaintances, poets. Not exactly narrative nor non-fiction, the strangers, controllers or squatters without analytical, visionary, perceptive and syntactic a ticket, regional trains rattling across the genius which here surprises the reader, has no Ciociaria or very fast Japanese convoys: precedent in twentieth-century Italian literature, if these micro-stories invite us to meditate on not perhaps in the prose of Roberto Longhi, Elsa destination errors, delays or on those moments Morante, Goffredo Parise. of emptiness that open up during certain However, these are more partial affinities rather mysterious stops in the countryside. Valerio Details Details than derivations: because in each of its chapters – A novel, Einaudi May 2019, 84 pages Magrelli reconstructs a ramified series of A novel, Einaudi, April 2019, 114 pages each in its own way and with a different style, in About the author adventures, without forgetting the memories of Patrizia Cavalli was born in Todi, Umbria, autobiographical fragments, anecdotal parables, the toy trains, or the most tragic implications and lives in Rome. She is the author of portraits and micro-philosophies of love, envy of the railway world like the Bologna massacre About the author the poetry collections Le mie poesie non or sensory ecstasy – Con passi giapponesi obeys a Valerio Magrelli (born in Rome) is a cambieranno il mondo (1974), Il cielo (1981), in 1980. In doing so, he manages to give us single commandment: “I must understand”. a sort of “vice-autobiography”, or perhaps a tenured professor of French literature at the Poesie (1992), Sempre aperto teatro (1999), Pigre University of Cassino. Translator, essayst and divinità e pigra sorte (2006), Tre risvegli (2013), From the first text that gives the volume its small encyclopedia of the journey, capable poet, he directed the trilingual series Writers and of the poems La Guardiana (2005) and title, the reader finds himself contemplating a of revealing the tragicomic aspects of human Translated by Writers (National Award for La patria (2011). Her works have won many comic-tragic world, labyrinthine to the point Translation 1996). His most recent books awards, including Viareggio Repaci, Pasolini, existence and civil coexistence. of dizziness, in which passions without success are Le cavie. Poesie 1980-2018 (2018), Il Dessì, Lerici Pea, De Sanctis and Monselice Prize. She wrote radio plays for Italian public and desperate, forced social mannerisms come commissario Magrelli (2018) and radio Rai and translated Shakespeare (The on stage, while life bleeds out, faking it.” La vicevita (2009; 2019). Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello), Alfonso Berardinelli Wilde (Salome), Molière (Amphitryon), and La tragédie de Carmen by Peter Brook. In 2012, Cavalli published Flighty Matters, a bilingual poetry collection about fashion, and Al cuore fa bene far le scale, a book and CD album with Diana Tejera. Her latest poetry collection is Datura (2013). Her poems have been translated into many languages, including French, English, Spanish, and German. In 2016, she was awarded the McKim Medal by the American Academy in Rome. In 2017 she received the Premio letterario internazionale Carlo Betocchi-Città di Firenze and the Premio Feltrinelli for poetry. her most recent work is Con passi giapponesi (2019). 24 25 Elena Stancanelli Elena Stancanelli venne alla spiaggia un assassino La femmina nuda (Bodies) (The Nude Female)

❝ The autopsy of a country expressed through ❝ You cannot stop reading this book. ❞ the display – rather than the testimony – of a writer able to narrate the boundaries while crossing them, both those of the sea and her Anna is a beautiful, intelligent woman with ❞ own. an interesting job. But all of a sudden none of Nadia Terranova, Il Foglio this is of any use. After five years her love affair with David has sunk into a web of betrayal, lies and blackmail. Her life is falling apart, and her “The Mediterranean sea is filling up with dead obsession takes the place of every other thought. bodies. Boats that are inadequate and crammed Anna begins to compulsively check David’s to capacity are sailing in sight, trying to reach cellphone, read his chats and explore his social Italian shores. Some succeed, others are sent network presence. She becomes hysterical, back to Libya and many sink. I decided to go insomniac and doesn’t eat; she smokes and gets and see. Distressed by the irrationality and drunk every night to be able to get some sleep. Details the ferocity that drive Italian ministers of the Details La nave di Teseo, May 2019, 208 pages This story is her confession, in the form of a letter, present government and politicians to consider La nave di Teseo 2016, 160 pages to Valentina, her dearest friend, who has watched the dead a good example, a deterrent for other Shortlisted for Premio Strega 2016 her destroy herself for the entire year, night after Premio Ninfa Galatea 2016, Premio Caccuri 2016 ❝ ❞ immigrants ready to leave, I embarked with A surprising, unpredictable book. night. Anna tells all, with no hang-ups. The those who want to save them. This book is about Film rights optioned by Taodue Il Foglio humiliating and ridiculous details, her lookouts the time I spent on the boats of some notorious Foreign rights sold in while spying on the other woman, her whole NGOs (non-governmental organizations), that France (Stock), Germany (Berlin), About the author morbid obsession. Anna resembles all of us who The Netherlands: (Wereldbibliotheek), Elena Stancanelli was born in Firenze. She is in a few months were no longer considered allies fight this paradoxical war called love. At times we Spain and Latin America (Anagrama). the author of novels and stories, and a regular of the Italian coastguard but became responsible win, more often we lose. The only thing we can contributor to several newspapers. Among of every heinousness. Women and men who ❝ her works: Benzina (1998), which became a always count on, the only thing that can show us Elena Stancanelli has found the words dedicate their lives to sea rescue and would ❞ film in 2001, Le attrici (2001), Un uomo giusto our limits, our needs, is our body. And Anna will to go deep in self-annihilation. deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Sometimes (2011), and the short stories included in the grab hold of her body to beat the pain. Il Foglio anthologies Ragazze che dovresti conoscere it is difficult to understand where to stand, ❝ (2004), Figuracce (2014) and Smash (2016). sometimes it’s very easy.” Simply, all this happens: someone @elenastanka Elena Stancanelli heals, someone gets hurt. And someone can write it. ❞ la Repubblica

26 27 Non-fiction

28 29 About the author Sergio Luzzatto Sergio Luzzatto teaches Modern History at the University of Turin. He is the max fox o le relazioni pericolose author of Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age (Metropolitan Books, 2010), which won the prestigious Cundill Prize in History; of The Body of Il Duce: (Max Fox Or Dangerous Liaisions) Mussolini's Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy (Metropolitan Books, 2005), of Primo Levi’s Resistance. Rebels and Collaborators in Occupied Italy (Metropolitan Books, An engaging Italian criminal case that became 2016), published in France by Gallimard (Partigia, 2016) and in Spain by Debate an international scandal, revealing the flaws of a (Partisanos, 2015), i bambini di Moshe. Gli orfani della Shoah e la nascita di Israele subtly corrupted system. A story so incredible – (Moshe’s Children. Orphans of the Holocaust and the Birth of Israel, 2018), Max Fox o le relazioni pericolose (2019). with a protagonist so extreme – that it deserved to be told from start to finish. After Nicholas Schmidle’s 2013 reportage on the New Yorker, historian Sergio Luzzatto dives deeper into the De Caro affair, that is not history ❝ It is the rule ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ that governs the rare-book market. ❞ yet, but will definitely make it. The New York Times about the Girolamini Library case

❝ A reckless and enticing match. ❞ ❝ Like great storytellers do, Luzzatto accepts and allows to ferment the dual effect produced il Venerdì by the contact with his double”. ❞ Il Sole 24 Ore ❝ If you love stories, you need to read this. ❞ Il Foglio ❝ I can't wait to read Luzzatto's book. I'm counting down the minutes. ❞ Giampiero Mughini Details An essay, Einaudi February 2019, 312 pages

In the spring of 2012 Massimo De Caro was arrested for having robbed the ancient Sergio Luzzatto’s backlist Girolamini Library in Naples – a site of great prestige where thousands of manuscripts and Partigia printed volumes were preserved for centuries – of which he recently had managed to be Una storia della Resistenza appointed director. Mondadori 2013, 376 pages This episode, which The New York Times reports as “the biggest books scandal to hit in the I bambini di Moshe past 150 or 200 years”, is only the epilogue of an existential parabola that in fifteen years Gli orfani della shoah e la nascita di Israele has turned “Max Fox” (the Skype nickname Massimo De Caro chose for himself, after Wall Einaudi 2018, 380 pages Street’s Bud Fox) an ordinary Italian provincial boy, a lazy student and amateur bibliophile, not only into a serial predator of ancient books, but also in a prodigious forger, capable of fooling the international academic and scientific community, and a reckless fixer, with connections all over the world. However, De Caro’s unique story might not be just about him. It’s also about our time, Foreign publishers of Sergio Luzzatto’s books where truth and honesty are considered to be relative. And it is under the pressure of this France (Gallimard), Spain and Latin America (Debate), US and UK (Metropolitan Books). civil doubt that Sergio Luzzatto – one of Italy’s most renowned historians and academics – accepts the risk of a “dangerous liaison”. Inspired and guided by the works of Javier Cercas and Emmanuel Carrère, who crossed paths with notorious imposters, he meets with the detainee De Caro, studies his motives, retraces his networks from Argentina to Russia. In fact, what attracts Luzzatto is not only the character, this charismatic anti-hero and

international felon, but it’s also and foremost the shadow that present history can cast on fiction

the past, the vertigo the author feels as a scholar coming to terms with the dark side of his fiction

- - profession. Combining the analytical gaze of the historian with the passion of the narrator,

Luzzatto transforms the story of a man into the novel of an era. non 30 31non Roberto Burioni Roberto Burioni balle mortali la congiura dei somari (Deadly Lies) (The Conspiracy of Dunces)

❝ In a world overflowing with dangerous lies it is important to know the truth in order to combat ❝ Science Can’t Be Democratic. ❞ obscurantism. ❞

A child dies from otitis treated with homeopathy Science is not democratic, only those who sweat instead of antibiotics. A woman succumbs to a over books and have access to a rigorous method melanoma because instead of an oncologist she for distinguishing truths from lies can give their relied on the German New Medicine. A child opinions. Not the “dunces” who, not having the whose parents were against vaccines barely slightest notion of medicine or biology, claim survives a tetanus infection. And then there are that “ten vaccines are too many,” “diseases heal the patients deceived by the Stamina method by themselves,” “vaccinations only enrich the stem-cell treatment and the Di Bella cancer cure... pharmaceutical industry.” Roberto Burioni has In his new book Roberto Burioni defends science, met many of them and fought them. He fights experimental tests, and precise data by closely them in this book too, because of course the examining ten dangerous lies that jeopardize truths that science offers us are always partial Details our health, that of our children, and the whole and in progress, but the alternative is darkness, Details Rizzoli, October 2018, 192 pages community – because in the medical field, fake obscurantism and, when toying with health, even Rizzoli 2017, 172 pages news can kill, and it is a civic duty to unmask death. such false information. ❝ An easy, clear, exciting and very useful reading that helps us understand the reasons behind the About the author need for a scientific approach based on many aspects of our life. ❞ Roberto Burioni was born in Pesaro, is a ❝ In spring 2016, Burioni sat down, doctor: after graduating from the Università Corriere della Sera fired up his laptop and began debunking Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome and doing ❝ a Ph.D in Microbiological Sciences at the anti-vaccination conspiracy theories A very beautiful book that reestablishes, step by step, example after example, a principle University of Genoa, he specialized in Clinical on his public Facebook page. ❞ of authoritativeness. ❞ Immunology and spent long periods as a Time La Stampa visiting professor at major foreign universities. Since 2004 he is Professor of Microbiology ❝ Precise as a scientific essay and enjoyable as a novel. To be read in schools. ❞ and Virology at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan, where he is in charge Io Donna of an immunological research laboratory il vaccino non è un’opinione and is active as a researcher in the field of the development of human monoclonal (Vaccines Are Not a Matter of Opinion) antibodies against infectious agents. He is the author of numerous scientific works published "The earth is round, petrol is inflammable, vaccines do not cause by the most respected international journals autism”. Professor Burioni explains the indisputable scientific and he is regularly invited to present the reasons why vaccines are vital. While fearing the consequences of results of his research to the most important medical-scientific congresses around the fake news on the matter, spreading everyday through the internet – world. He is the author of Il vaccino non è the child population not covered by vaccinations is in rapid growth

un’opinione (2016), La congiura dei somari and it is reaching alarming levels – he brings the discussion back on fiction

(2017) and Balle mortali (2018), works that fiction - the objective level: facts have nothing to do with personal opinions. - have introduced him to non-specialist readers and spread his commitment against scientific Details

disinformation. Mondadori 2016, 168 pages non 32 33non About the author Gabriele Romagnoli Gabriele Romagnoli was born in Bologna in 1960 and is a senza fine journalist and a writer. La meraviglia dell’ultimo amore He is the author of Navi in bottiglia (Mondadori, 1993), Louisiana Blues (2001), L’artista (2004), Non ci sono santi (2006), Un tuffo (Endless. The Wonder of the Last Love) nella luce (Mondadori, 2010), Domanda di grazia (2014), Solo bagaglio a mano (2015), Coraggio! (2016), Senza fine (2018). ❝ Life is boring, but destiny is unpredictable. One writes rules, the other notes exceptions. ❞ ❝ Among the many factors that make Gabriele Ro- magnoli a good friend to anyone who loves reading The first love is a myth, the last love a chance (his news reports, his commentary, his novels), for salvation. It rekindles joy, redeems suffering, there’s the ability to never be predictable, the gives meaning to life. To be able to live it requires carefully cultivated gift for entertaining. ❞ more than learning how to choose the other, you la Repubblica need to learn how to give the best of yourself. This book describes unavoidable paths and ❝ Gabriele Romagnoli has an impressive ability to necessary choices. These are embodied by three collect instants, while always keeping an original main characters: a man losing his sight, who point of view on the world. It is worth hearing him returns to the light of the beginning; the author’s out even just for the rhythm of his blunt, essential father, who discovers the art of marriage just writing, his wit and the diversity of his stories ❞ Details before it’s too late; and a man nearly 100 years old Panorama Feltrinelli, October 2018, 96 pages who remarries and returns to being “deliriously foreign rights sold ijn happy,” as we are all entitled to be. Around them Spain (Atico de los libros). philosophers dance on the ashes of disaffection, Gabriele Romagnoli’s backlist James Dean invites us to trust our illusions, and the threads of all the relationships we have lived Solo bagaglio a mano (Carry-On Only) Feltrinelli 2015, 86 pages intertwine to eventually tie us into one. A metaphor of a way of living which urges “Life is boring, but destiny is unpredictable. the liberation from every single need. One writes rules, the other notes exceptions.” Knowing how to transform ourselves into those Coraggio! (Courage!) exceptions pushes us towards our goal without Feltrinelli 2016, 104 pages fear of getting there, because indeed, “we will A personal catalogue of courageous men, know how to play until it gets dark,” and even a necessary exercise in philosophy of the existence. beyond, endlessly.

Foreign publishers of Gabriele Romagnoli’s books Germany (Kösel), Greece (Skarifima), Spain (Atico de los libros). ❝ Romagnoli guides us like the skillful writer he is, hiding continuously the ancient and complex art of the novel behind the rarefied simplicity of the reportage ❞

la Repubblica

fiction

- non 34 35non Ezio Mauro l'uomo bianco (The White Man)

❝ How did we end up in this nightmare of closures, barriers, violence? ❞

On February 3, 2018, in the central Italian town of Macerata, a man took a gun and shot at random against all the black people he saw. It wasn’t an isolated gesture, it wasn’t spontaneous, and didn’t come from nothing. On the contrary, it was fostered by a climate of creeping legitimacy that appears to be moving in the same direction as our democracy, often respecting its institutions, although increasingly alien to the values of the West. And yet, we are defeated once and for all Details when the fate of others no longer matters to us. Feltrinelli, October 2018, 144 pages Where does it begin and where does it end, how does the normality of a country and its people ❝ ❞ The right book at the right time. change? Il Fatto Quotidiano The bad feelings, “go back to where you come About the author from,” the kicks, the fists, the shots fired meant to Ezio Mauro was born in Dronero (Cuneo). kill: “What are you doing here, you piece-of-shit He is one of the most important journalist nigger?” We think we’ve remained the same, but in Italy. He has been foreign correspondent from the Unites States and from Russia, we’re becoming individual actors of a collective and the editor-in-chief of la Repubblica for change. We see our fears flare up, but we can’t see twenty years, from 1996 to 2016. He is the how they act on us. It’s a private, invisible ladder author of La felicità della democrazia. Un that we descend step by step, day after day, craven dialogo (2011), with Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Babel (2015), his dialogue on democracy act after craven act, connivance after connivance, with Zygmunt Bauman, L'anno del ferro until we all share a new social environment. It e del fuoco (2017), L'uomo bianco (2018). wasn’t always like that, we never used to allow @eziomauro this. A book that digs down to the bone of our mutation, leaving us naked and terrified in front of the fragility of our civil society. A poignant reflection on the contradictions of a democracy that cannot find solutions, neither for the safety

of some nor for the desperation of others, and fiction

on the dissolution of politics, capable only of fiction -

renouncing itself as it feeds off fear and anger. Backlist - non 36 37non About the author Niccolò Ammaniti Niccolò Ammaniti was born in Rome anna in 1966. He made his début in fiction in 1995 with the novel Branchie. He is the author of award-winning novels and short The extraordinary dystopian novel from the stories translated in 44 countries: Fango internationally-bestselling author of I’m Not (1996), Ti prendo e ti porto via (1999), Io Scared. non ho paura (2001, Premio Viareggio),

Come Dio comanda (2006, Premio Crevena © Daniela ph It is four years since the virus came, killing every Strega), Che la festa cominci (2009), Io e adult in its path. Not long after that the electricity te (2010), Il momento è delicato (2012), failed. Food and water started running out. Fires Anna (2015). Many of his books have raged uncontrolled across the country. been successfully made into film: L’u l t i m o Now Anna cares for her brother alone in a house capodanno (directed by Marco Risi, 1998); hidden in the woods, keeping him safe from ‘the Branchie (directed by Francesco Ranieri Outside’, scavenging for food amid the packs of Martinotti, 1999); Io non ho paura and wild dogs that roam their ruined, blackened world. Come Dio comanda (both directed by Before their mother died, she told them to love Gabriele Salvatores, 2003 and 2008), Io e te each other and never part. She told them that, (directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, 2012). when they reach adulthood, the sickness will Following his work as author and director of claim them too. But she also told them that the feature-length doc The Good Life (2014), Details ❝ Ammaniti’s devotion to his someone, somewhere, will have a cure. When the Ammaniti has recently made his TV debut A novel, Einaudi Stile Libero 2015, 286 pages protagonist brings him close to the time comes, Anna knows, they must leave their with The Miracle, a SKY original series for compassion that Cormac McCarthy world and find another. which he was showrunner, co-writer and co- ❝ Ammaniti sets a new standard transmits to his creatures in The Road, By turns luminous and tender, gripping and director. in post-apocalyptic fiction. ❞ recalling the atmosphere of William horrifying, Anna is a haunting parable of love and The Guardian Golding’s Lord of the Flies and the loneliness; of the stories we tell to sustain us, and ❝ Little savages fighting with the hostility decadence of The Walking Dead, ❝ Ammaniti has created a totally the lengths we will go to in order to stay alive. ❞ of the world and the lack of role models, though without the carnage. convincing Lord of the Flies-esque ❝ This unbeatable storytelling a world with new rules, absolutely unknown. ❞ Corriere della Sera world and young Anna, endlessly – an immediate and engaging study Le Figaro Littéraire resourceful amid the horror and Foreign rights sold in of humanity at its best and worst. ❞ Australia and New Zealand (Text Publishing), chaos, is a heroine to root for. ❞ Financial Time ❝ One of Italy’s foremost literary talents... Brazil (Bertrand Editora Brasil), China (Shanghai The Bookseller 99), France (Grasset), Germany (Eisele), Greece Combines the wayward fantasy of J.G. Ballard (Metaixmio), The Netherlands (Lebowski), Serbia ❝ A powerfully disturbing with comic-strip adventure... Ammaniti has ❝ A magnificently crumbling Sicily. ❞ (Plato Books), Slovakia (Ikar), Spain, Castilian and thought-provoking read. ❞ lost none of his gift for landscape description. ❞ (Anagrama), Spain, Catalan (Angle), Turkey la Repubblica Daily Mail Times Literary Supplement (Can Yayınları), UK and USA (Canongate).

from the author of i’m not scared

anna NICCOLÒ AMMANITI

38 AnanaCR#2.indd 1 13/02/2017 1:43 pm 39 Niccolò Ammaniti a selection of foreign editions An international bestselling author TI PRENDO E TI PORTO VIA CHE LA FESTA COMINCI COME DIO COMANDA IO NON HO PAURA IO E TE

Foreign publishers of Niccolò Ammaniti’s works Albania (Botimet Dudaj), Australia and New Zealand (Text Publishing), Brazil (Companhia das Letras, Bertrand Editora Brasil), Bulgaria (Colibri), China (Shanghai 99, Crown Publishing, Horizon Media), Croatia (AGM, Profil), Czech Republic (Havran, NLN), Denmark (Gyldendal), Egypt (Beba Editions), Estonia (Pegasus), Finland (Otava Publishing), France (Edition du Félin, Grasset, Laffont), Germany (Eisele, Fischer, Reclam, Piper), Greece (Perugia, Kastaniotis, Metaixmio), Hungary (Ulpius Haz, Noram kiado, Európa Könyvkiadó), Iceland (Bjartur), Israel (Kinneret), Japan (Hayakawa Shobo), Latvia (Jāņa Rozes apgāds), Lithuania (Tyto Alba, Alma Littera), Korea (Seamulkiul, Sigongsa), Macedonia (Kultura, Magor, Antolog), Mozambico (Societade Ediotorial Ndjira), The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek, Prometheus, Lebowski), Norway (HR Ferdinand, Vigmostad og Bjørke), Poland (Muza), Portugal (Dom Quixote, Bertrand Editora), Romania (Humanitas), Russia (Machaon, Inostranka, Atticus, Corpus), Serbia (Plato Books), Slovakia (Ikar), Slovenia (Goga, Študentska založba), Slovakia (Slovart), Spain and Latin America, Castilian (Grijalbo, Anagrama), Spain, Catalan (Empuries, Angle Editorial), Sweden (Norstedts), Thailand (Butterfly Publishing), Turkey (Can Yayinlari, Doğan Kitap), UK (Canongate), USA (Canongate US, Black Cat-Grove Atlantic), Vietnam (Phu Nu).

40 41 Francesca Borri Teresa Ciabatti Ma quale paradiso? LA più amata tra i jihadisti delle maldive (The Most Loved) (Destination Paradise. Among the Jihadists of the Maldives) ❝ An anti-coming-of-age novel. ❞ A breathtaking reportage to understand islamic Corriere della Sera terrorism in a place where the First and the Third World are divided but close. And the contrast is enlightening. “My name is Teresa Ciabatti, I’m four years old, and I’m the Professor’s daughter, his joy, his pride, Western tourists barely realise it is a Muslim his love.” The Professor – a benefactor, people country. Yet, the Republic of Maldives is a non- say, almost a saint – is Lorenzo Ciabatti, head Arab country with the world’s highest number physician of a small town hospital in Tuscany. of foreign fighters per capita. Everybody has Everyone loves him, everyone dreads him, and a brother, a cousin, a friend in Syria. This is a Teresa is his beloved daughter. She’s the princess reportage on what we do not know about the swimming in the huge pool of a villa on the hills, countries jihadists come from. the queen building a castle for her Barbies with the golden bars found in one of her father’s drawers. Details Details The only one allowed to wear the Professor’s ring, A novel, Mondadori, February 2017, 218 pages A reportage, Einaudi, June 2017, 120 pages the ring of power, someone whispers. Shortlisted for Premio Strega 2016 About the author ❝ A well-written, revelatory journey beyond the One day, Lorenzo Ciabatti is abducted in front ❝ Francesca Borri was born in Bari. Writer and tourist facade of Maldives – a clear hit for Italy. ❞ of his family. Who is he really? The charitable This is the story of a missing piece journalist, she worked as human rights adviser ❞ The preparatory committee physician who helps the poor, or a violent and in life. What is the fault, if any? in the Middle East, especially in Israel and calculating man? A man of power who may la Repubblica Palestine. She turned to journalism in 2012 of the European Press Prize to cover the battle for Aleppo, and since then, have had a role in some of the darkest events About the author her dispatches have been translated into 21 of the recent Italian history? While Teresa slips Teresa Ciabatti was born in Orbetello and languages. She writes about Palestinians for into a difficult adolescence, she realizes that the lives in Rome. Writer and screenwriter, she is Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s main newspaper and benevolence that has always surrounded her is the author of the novels Adelmo, torna da me is the author of La guerra dentro (Syrian Dust, European Press Prize Shortlist an effect of her father’s power and influence. (2002), that became the movie L’estate del mio 2014), under translation into several languages, The Distinguished Writing Award 2017 Nominee primo bacio (2006), directed by Carlo Virzì, I and Ma quale paradiso? Tra i jihadisti delle She’s not special, a princess, a queen, and so giorni felici (2008), Il mio paradiso è deserto Maldive (2017). In 2017 she has won the Letizia Foreign rights sold in the beautiful and pampered child turns into (2013), Tuttissanti (2013), La più amata Leviti Prize for journalism. Brazil (Editora Âyiné), an arrogant and dismissive teenager. Irritable (2017), Matrigna (2018). She is a regular @francescaborri USA (Seven Stories Press). and manipulative, totally unprepared to life. contributor to Corriere della Sera. As an adult, Teresa finally decides to search @teresaciabatti for the truth. She wants to know what has made her that type of woman, restless and incomplete, and finds herself digging into a past where nothing is as it seems, following the urge to deal with a childhood brutally interrupted. With a dense and urgent writing ph © Pasquale Di Blasio © Pasquale ph – which goes down into the burning substance of life, lightning up its obscure corners – Teresa Ciabatti reconstructs the story of her family. 42 43 Gianrico Carofiglio Gianrico Carofiglio con i piedi nel fango le tre del mattino (Feet in the Mud) (Three in the Morning)

A father and son. The story of an encounter A passionate dialogue on politics and truth. that will change them forever. A moving novel of discovery and coming of age.

Politics means dealing with things as they really Antonio is a solitary and brooding high school are, things that are often not beautiful and not student. His father is a mathematician with clean. We must go into the mud, sometimes, to a brilliant past. The relationship between help others get out of it. But we must always keep them has never been easy. One afternoon our eyes on the horizon of rules, values, good in June, during the early 1980s, they landed reasons. in Marseilles, where a series of unexpected A passionate and exciting dialogue. A handbook circumstances would force them to spend two for critical thought, to avoid manipulation, to days and nights without sleep. reaffirm - against every fanaticism - the laic Thus the boy and the man come to really know and emotional value of truth and political each other for the first time; they each are commitment. Because the future belongs to the reflected in the other and measure themselves Details Details Edizioni Gruppo Abele, March 2018, 112 pages non-disillusioned. against the figure of the mother and ex-wife, a A novel, Einaudi, October 2017, 170 pages beautiful and elusive woman. Their paths are Foreign rights sold in winding, at times hallucinatory, other times Foreign rights Germany (Scoventa). merry, traversing notorious neighborhoods, World English (Text), German rights (Folio Verlag), spectacular seaside landscapes, and hidden About the author French rights (Slatkine), Award-winning novelist Gianrico Carofiglio places inhabited by nocturnal creatures. An Spanish rights (Anagrama). is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and adventurous and wrenching voyage along life’s the best-selling Guido Guerrieri crime series. horizon. Film rights optioned His books have sold more than four million With a crisp, geometrically precise language copies in Italy and have been translated into able to catch the subtlest nuances, Gianrico 27 languages worldwide. ❝ This is a wonderful book, Carofiglio constructs an unforgettable story @GianricoCarof there’s not much else to say. ❞ about illusions and regret, about the passing of Corriere della Sera time, love and talent. ❝ A coming-of-age journey that is as rational as it is touching, and that builds up some crucial symbolisms (the mother and the father have no name, photo © Basso Cannarsa © Basso photo they only represent their objective function) in the reflections of a beautiful dryness. ❞ la Repubblica

44 45 Gianrico Carofiglio Gianrico Carofiglio l’estate fredda LA REGOLA DELL'EQUILIBRIO (The Cold Summer) (A Fine Line)

Inspired by a true story, The Cold Summer is The fifth novel in the international bestselling Carofiglio’s most hard hitting novel yet. series featuring Guido Guerrieri.

The summer of 1992 is a cold one in southern Guido Guerrieri is the most famous lawyer in Italy. The chilling Mafia violence currently Italian fiction – a reluctant and ironic moral sweeping Sicily has spread to Puglia, much to the hero. A success in his profession, with a brilliant consternation of Pietro Fenoglio, a local officer career, Guerrieri also has a fragile side, which of the Carabinieri. acts as countermelody to his great irony. Fenoglio, recently jilted by his wife, must He lives in a Bari that has never been so simultaneously deal with his personal crisis and enthusiastically portrayed. The city’s striking the gang wars raging around Bari. The case is views – the old center’s little alleys, the wind that stalled until a Mafia member, suspected of killing blows in from the sea – and its typical characters the son of a rival mobster, decides to collaborate. accurately illustrate the contradiction of The brutal killings are stopped but the mystery southern Italy and the entire country. Guerrieri of the boy’s murder must still be solved, leading trains as a boxer in his free time, and guided by Details Fenoglio into a world of deep moral ambiguity, a strong sense of justice, he often embarks on Details A novel, Einaudi 2014, 288 pages A novel, Einaudi 2016, 354 pages where the investigators are hard to distinguish apparently impossible causes. from the investigated. Foreign rights sold in Foreign rights sold in In A Fine Line a magistrate at the apex of his Albania (Fjala), Denmark (HR Ferdinand), Australia and New Zealand (Text), Denmark prestigious career finds himself investigated Germany (Goldmann), Poland (WAB Foksal), (HR Ferdinand), Germany (Goldmann), following the declaration of a criminal who has ❝ Hard-hitting, morally complex, UK and USA (Bitter Lemon Press). France (Slatkine), UK and USA (Bitter Lemon turned state witness. He is accused of corruption. and highly entertaining. A fascinating look In his own defense he decides to turn to an old ❝ Guerrieri is a wonderfully at the Italian mafia, and the police friend, the lawyer Guido Guerrieri. The defense’s convincing character. ❞ ❝ The author occupies a niche who battled them, in the early 1990s. ❞ investigation sets into motion the mechanism The Times similar to Erle Stanley Gardner Peter Swanson, author of All the beautiful lies of memories, but in their unpredictable and John Grisham. ❞ ❝ A Fine Line is a terrific novel, a legal development they place Guerrieri in front of Times Literary Supplement ❝ The Cold Summer is a masterpiece, a novel that not thriller full of complex meditations on the painful dilemmas. only narrates Italy, but also the modern world. A novel life of the lawyer and the difficult compro- Because anyone can make a mistake, but to ❝ Hard-boiled and sun-dried in equal that should be mandatory in school, to fight against mises inherent in any system of criminal justify one’s own errors to oneself means parts. ❞ the epidemic of corruption and mediocrity. ❞ justice. A book that is intensely rewarding renouncing the truth. It means ignoring the rule Financial Times Eugenia Rico, author of El beso del canguro at many levels. ❞ of balance. Scott Turow

46 47 Gianrico Carofiglio THE GUIDO GUERRIERI NOVELS Le perfezioni provvisorie (Temporary Perfections)

❝ What places him in a superior league is the translation rights portrayal of a part of Italian society not nor- Marcella Marini at Sellerio: [email protected] mally encountered in crime fiction. ❞ The Times

It all began with an unusual assignment, a job Involuntary Witness A Walk in the Dark Reasonable Doubts 2002 2003 2006 better suited for Marlowe than for defence coun- sel Guido Guerrieri. Could he find new evidence ❝ Guerrieri could have just gotten off an Alitalia flight from the land of Grisham or the Los to force the police to reopen their investigation Angeles of Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer. Sharp writing will keep readers turning of the disappearance of Manuela, the daughter of the pages. ❞ a rich couple living in Bari? The stories of Ma- Publishers Weekly nuela’s druggy university friends don’t quite add up. Her best friend, Caterina, too beautiful and ❝ Guido Guerrieri is wonderful company on late-night walks through the city of Bari, Italy, certainly too young for Guerrieri, is a tempta- brooding on lost loves and misspent lives.❞ tion he doesn’t need. He fights his loneliness by Details The New York Times A Guido Guerrieri novel, Sellerio 2010, talking to the punching bag hanging in his living 336 pages room and by walking the streets of Bari late at About the author Premio Selezione Campiello night, activities that somehow lead to solving the Award-winning, best-selling novelist Gianrico Carofiglio riddle of Manuela’s vanishing. Foreign rights sold in was born in Bari in 1961 and worked for many years as Czech Republic (Host), Denmark a prosecutor specializing in organized crime. He was (HR Ferdinand), France (Seuil), appointed advisor of the anti-Mafia committee in the Germany (Goldmann), The Netherlands (Prometheus), Poland (WAB Foksal), ❝ A first-rate thriller, stylish, Italian Parliament in 2007 and served as a senator from Portugal (Porto Editora), Spain (Esfera de los witty and suspenseful. ❞ 2008 to 2013. Besides the bestselling Guido Guerrieri Libros), UK (Bitter Lemon Press), Kathy Reichs crime series, Carofiglio is the aurhor of many novels, USA (Rizzoli International). short stories and essays. Gianrico Carofiglio’s books ❝ Carofiglio writes crisp, ironical novels that are have sold four million and five hundred thousand copies as much love stories and philosophical treaties in Italy and have been translated or are going to be as they are legal thrillers.❞ translated into 27 languages worldwide. The New Yorker @GianricoCarof

48 49 Gianrico Carofiglio Gianrico Carofiglio IL BORDO VERTIGINOSO DELLE COSE IL SILENZIO DELL’ONDA (The Vertiginous Edge of Things) (The Silence of the Wave)

A coming of age novel, an initiation into life and violence, a tale about the passion for ideas and A thriller about human faults, frailties, and the words, a love story, a reflection on the fleeting painful bond between fathers and sons. nature of success and failure.

A coffee bar, a crime story in the newspaper, a name Every Monday and Thursday, Roberto Marías resurfacing from the past. Enrico Vallesi is a man crosses Rome on foot for his appointment with betrayed by the success of his first novel, trapped his psychiatrist. There he sits in silence, flooded in a paradoxical fate, which has the bitter taste of by memories. His past has left him devastated, missed opportunities. But the day comes when he but now his psychiatrist’s words, his hypnotic can no longer elude his memory. So Enrico decides strolls through Rome, and a chance meeting with to get on a train and go back to the city where he a woman named Emma – who, like Roberto, is grew up, from which he escaped many years ago. ravaged by a profound guilt – begin to painfully Thus he begins a compelling journey of rediscovery revive him. And when eleven-year-old Giacomo through the memories of a troubled adolescence, asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, wavering between anger and tenderness. It’s a frag- Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth. Details Details A novel, Rizzoli 2013, 320 pages ile time, moving and violent, marked by his love for A novel, Rizzoli 2011, 300 pages Celeste, the young and brilliant philosophy teacher, Shortlisted for Premio Strega 2012 Foreign rights sold in and his dangerous attraction to Salvatore, a class- ❝Absorbing and beautifully written, a work of Bronze Winner in the Foreword Book Germany (Goldmann), Poland (WAB Foksal), ❞ of the Year Awards for Mystery 2013 Spain (Esfera de los Libros). mate who is already an adult and experienced in life considerable subtlety and depth. – even its most ferocious aspects. The Times Foreign rights sold in With a smooth, sharp prose and a pace that won’t France (Seuil), Germany (Goldmann), ❝ His best book after the lucky debut let you go, Gianrico Carofiglio guides us between ❝ A novel distinguished by the natural gift Poland (WAB Foksal), Spain (Esfera de los ❞ ❞ Libros), UK (Bitter Lemon Press), series of lawyer Guerrieri. the stories and the characters’ psychology, investi- of prose, as smooth and silent as a perfect wave. USA (Rizzoli International). Il Venerdì di Repubblica gating the cracks of existence and evoking the ba- Corriere della Sera nality of everyday life, “the sense of alienation that ❝ Carofiglio’s insights into human takes hold of us when we travel to distant and un- ❝ Italy’s best exports now include number-one nature – good and bad – are breath- known lands”. bestselling writer Gianrico Carofiglio. ❞ taking. ❞ Gay Talese Jeffery Deaver

50 51 Gianrico Carofiglio Gianrico Carofiglio con parole precise il passato è una terra straniera (With Exact Words) (The Past Is a Foreign Country)

“Dealing with public language and its quality is An international bestseller and winner of neither a luxury for intellectuals nor a question Italy’s prestigious Premio Bancarella prize, an for academics. It is a crucial duty of civil ethics.” intense psychological thriller in the vein of The Talented Mr. Ripley.

You cannot think clearly if you cannot speak and As world-weary Lieutenant Chiti spends sleep- write clearly. These are the words of the philoso- less nights hunting for the serial rapist terrorizing pher John Searle, a theoretician on the relation- his city, trainee lawyer Giorgio is befriended by ship between language and institutional reality. dangerously charismatic Francesco. Slowly the Societies are constructed and held together es- innocent Giorgio is lured into a corrupt world of sentially on a linguistic premise: based on the beautiful women and casual violence. Then one fact that saying something involves a commit- terrifying night Giorgio is forced to realize just ment to the truth and correctness with respect how far he has left his past behind. to the listener. Not observing this commitment puts the first ❝ A stunner... unforgettable novel. ❞ Details Details social contract of the community in danger, that Laterza 2015, 184 pages The Sunday Times A novel, Rizzoli 2004, 304 pages is, trust in a shared language. The antidote is Premio Bancarella 2005 civil writing, clear and democratic, respectful of ❝ A crisp and chilling account of temptation words and ideas. Writing well, in every field, has Foreign rights sold in and transgression that fans of Patricia High- Argentina (El Ateneo), France (Payot e a direct correspondence to the quality of reason- smith Rivages), Germany (Goldmann), ing and thought. It implies clarity of ideas on the Greece (Modern Times), Romania (Leda), will adore. ❞ part of whoever is writing and produces in the Russia (Inostranka), Spain and Latin America The Independent reader the perception of honesty. (La Esfera de los Libros), Turkey (Neden Kitap), UK and USA (Old Street Publishing, ❝ Set largely in the southern Italian city of Bari, Thomas Dunne), Vietnam (Nhã Nam). ❝ The danger, very concrete nowadays, is that this stylish psychological thriller from (a pseudo) public discourse might create a Carofiglio fuses Jack Kerouac’s On the Road ❝ A fascinating, succint and stylish travesty of democracy in which everyone could with hard-edged crime fiction à la Henning thriller from Italy. ❞ lie and contradict himself with no consequence Mankell’s Inspector Wallander saga. ❞ The Guardian whatsoever. ❞ Publishers Weekly Gianrico Carofiglio in an interview to L'Espresso

❝ Partly theoretical essay, partly instruction manual, there is no less irony than rigour in it. ❞ Corriere della Sera

52 53 Gianrico Carofiglio Gianrico Carofiglio non esiste saggezza Passeggeri notturni (There Is No Wisdom) (Night Passengers)

Everyday small stories that become great An almanac of unexpected solutions, ironic stories, a journey in our fears and shadows. revelations, astonishing accidents of thought.

The stories in There is No Wisdom are set in eve- Voices reverberating in the darkness of half- ryday places, neutral transit points, and select empty wagons, lights flashing out of conver- as their focus seemingly unremarkable faces in sation fragments, scents hidden in memory’s the crowd. Most of the protagonists are women crevices. The titles of this collection – thirty negotiating personal crises, fighting their fate. three-page pieces – belong to different genres: And yet men do not simply look on; they be- a series of anecdotes, brief essays and striking come participants, by pursuing in these women stories. an impression, or a suspicion, or the resolution They are inhabited above all by elusive and of a curiosity that propels them beyond the pre- unforgettable females, and dramatic or bitter dictable – sometimes into the illicit. In terse but events alternate with comic situations in a penetrative prose, Carofiglio gives names to our constant play of mirrors blurring reality and Details fears and shadows and in turn achieves in this fiction. Holding everything together like in Details A short story collection, Rizzoli 2010, 204 pages A short story collection, Einaudi 2016, 104 pages Premio Chiara 2010 collection a kind of collective moral and existen- a mosaic is a prose as clear as the night air, tial salvation. capable of revealing the truth sealed in the Film tv rights sold to Anele Film tv rights sold to Anele details of existence with a masterful economy Foreign rights sold in ❝ A sober, precise, elegant fiction. [Carofiglio is] of words. It is an almanac of unexpected Germany (Goldmann) a story-teller brave enough to expose instants of solutions, ironic revelations, astonishing truth in a sea of deep emotions. ❞ accidents of thought. It is a cheerful and bold ❝ Each short story reveals the author’s Internazionale bet on the extraordinary power of characters, capability to enter his characters’ stories, and literature. ❝ One day a monk met a Zen master soul, capturing their weakness, their ❝ Every character in Carofiglio’s fiction and tried to make him uncomfortable pride, their shame and melancholy. has a story to tell and they are always by asking: ‘Without words and [Each story] is a glance that makes worth hearing. ❞ without silence, can you tell me what them familiar, real people rather than Daily Mail ❝ Carofiglio creates a writing method reality is?’ The master punched characters. ❞ that becomes a precise poetics. ❞ him in the face. ❞ Corriere della Sera ❝ A very charming book, aiming to the Corriere della Sera ineffable, to the hidden gaps of existence. ❞ Grazia ❝ Passeggeri notturni reveals a peculiar political profile of the author, made ❝ An ironic kind of fiction, made of subtle psy- of literary experimentation chological nuances. ❞ and concise writing. ❞ il Venerdì Corriere del Mezzogiorno

54 55 Gianrico and Francesco Carofiglio Francesco Carofiglio Una specie di felicità LA CASA NEL BOSCO (A Kind of Happiness) (The House in the Woods)

“Before leaving, there was always a sense of anti- In a duel between master and pupil, a fight made of cipation, like a slight fever of the soul. The things words and psychological investigation, a mysterious that would have happened that season would change and unexpected love will change everything. our lives forever.”

All this happened, more or less. Giulio d’Aprile is a psychoanalyst. He has a This is the first line of a great novel. Too bad it troubled teenage daughter, a seven-years-old was already written by Kurt Vonnegut, because it kid, and an ended marriage. Since then he lives would have been the ideal opening for this story. without leaving his comfort zone. His life changes Or rather, for these stories. The two protagonists when he meets the man who many years before – and authors – are brothers, but they don’t see had been his teacher, his mentor. A brilliant and each other much, they can hardly even stand highly regarded psychotherapist. The professor, each other. Different lives, different personali- an old tired man now, will be his patient: ties, and maybe even some distant resentments “dissociative disorder and escape from reality” the Details left brooding under the ash for too much time. diagnosis. Details Rizzoli 2014, 190 pages Now though, they have to stay together, at least As the sessions move forward, old memories and A novel, Piemme 2016, 182 pages Premio Riviera delle Palme for a few hours. They have to give a last look at secrets start emerging in a duel between master Premio Maratea 2016 the vacation house of their childhood – the house and pupil where it’s hard to understand who is ❝ in the woods, in the Mercadante forest, located in the doctor and who is the patient. But there is There are many different issues the Alta Murgia National Park, a protected area something else. A woman appeared one night and themes in this novel and they all in Puglia. and suddenly vanished, only to appear again. touch us. We are involved because ❞ Going to collect the last few objects seems like Giulio follows her without asking questions. He they belong to all of us. just a trivial, though somewhat sad task, but it just follows this charming stranger out there, Corriere della Sera ❝ Nabokov’s poetic manifesto ‘Detail becomes an unexpected opportunity for a voyage into the night. And this will abruptly reverse the is always welcome’ is something through memory, for a reconciliation, for a fun- course of his days. As a crack in the wall, as a kind similar to the Carofiglio’s choice to By the same author ny and moving inventory of places, odors, stories of happiness. Voglio vivere una prefer shades and particulars. and, above all, flavors. A memoir written by two volta sola And the past comes back with scents people who recount lost friendship, stolen loves, A novel, Piemme 2014, and flavours. ❞ 182 pages old comic strips and cheesecakes. In the back- Corriere della Sera ground, there is the enchantment of Puglia along with its colors and scents (in addition to some About the author typical recipes that celebrate the traditions and Francesco Carofiglio was born in Bari in 1964. Architect, filmaker and culinary art of that splendid region in the south illustrator, for many years he worked in theatre, both as an actor and an of Italy). author. He also writes subjects and screenplays for cinema and television. He is the author of With or Without you (2005), Cacciatori nelle tenebre (2007), a graphic novel written with his brother Gianrico, L’estate del cane nero (2008), Ritorno nella valle degli angeli (2009, winner of the Premio Stresa in 2010), Radiopirata (2011), Wok (2013), La casa nel bosco (2014), co-authored with his brother Gianrico, Voglio vivere una volta sola (2014), Una specie di felicità (2016) and Il maestro (2017). @fracarofiglio ph © alberto conti/contrast0 © alberto ph / impossiblephotos.com Salerno Maria © Pasquale ph 56 57 Francesco Carofiglio Paola Capriolo il maestro mi ricordo (The Maestro) (I Remember)

Two women, two destinies, and the mystery of the house on the river. He no longer has an audience. There’s just that girl.

Adela and Sonja: you couldn’t imagine two more different female figures and destinies. In the Corrado Lazzari has been the greatest actor of 1930s Adela led a life of wealth and ease with the twentieth century. A passionate interpreter her parents, in their riverside villa in an elegant of Shakespeare, acclaimed by the crowds all over Central European city. She got involved in a the world, he is now a lonely man. naive and passionate correspondence about art, Fame, success, friends: everything is lost. Weaving music and beauty with a distinguished poet. together past and present, memories as only Sonja, nowadays, is working in the same villa as a companions, he spends his days in his apartment, caregiver in the service of a despotic old gentleman. in an abandoned building in the center of Rome. But it was not by chance that she got there, because Then a young woman arrives, she studies theatre we will gradually discover a deep bond that brings and is fascinated by the Maestro’s art. The two these two parallel destinies together. While will develop a special bond neither has known Details taking care of her gentleman, accompanying him Details A novel, Piemme, September 2017, 156 pages before. Thanks to Alessandra, Corrado will find through his gradual regress back to childhood, A novel, Giunti 2015, 272 pages a way to accept his decline and make himself Sonja makes a long, archaeological dig in search Premio Segafredo Zanetti 2015, Premio Asti d’Appello 2015 immortal at the same time. of her own family past. She discovers Adela’s About the author Francesco Carofiglio once again reveals an letters to the poet in the attic of the house, intimate and universal reality, in which the true Paola Capriolo, translator of German literature, revealing to her and the reader Adela’s slow and a reviewer for the Corriere della Sera, is the meaning of life lies in sharing the moment, in the deterioration from normality to nightmare: the author of novels, short stories, essays and children deep relationship between two people. racial persecution, deportation to a death camp, books. Among her works: Il nocchiero (1989), freedom paid for with services rendered in Il doppio regno (1991), Vissi d’amore (1992), La spettatrice (1995), Un uomo di carattere (1996), Con another house, from which she can't escape and i miei mille occhi (1997), Barbara (1998), Il sogno ❝ I could be bounded which her tormentors call with vicious irony “The dell’agnello (1999), Una di loro (2001), Qualcosa in a nutshell and count myself House of Joy.” nella notte (2003), Una luce nerissima (2005), Maria Callas (2007), Caino (2012). Her books have been a king of infinite space. ❞ If there is a hope for redemption, then it is entrusted to the memory and compassion of translated in English, Danish, Dutch, French, William Shakespeare German, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Portuguese, those who would come after her; or perhaps in Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish. that mysterious phrase of Dostoyevsky, “Beauty About the author will save the world,” to which Sonja attributes a Francesco Carofiglio was born in Bari in 1964. Architect, filmaker and possible meaning, finally at peace with the ghosts illustrator, for many years he worked in theatre, both as an actor and an of her past. author. He also writes subjects and screenplays for cinema and television. He is the author of With or Without you (2005), Cacciatori nelle tenebre (2007), a graphic novel written with his brother Gianrico, L’estate del cane nero (2008), Ritorno nella valle degli angeli (2009, winner of the Premio Stresa in 2010), Radiopirata (2011), Wok (2013), La casa nel bosco (2014), co-authored with his brother Gianrico, Voglio vivere una volta sola (2014), Una specie di felicità (2016) and Il maestro (2017). @fracarofiglio / impossiblephotos.com Salerno Maria © Pasquale ph 58 59 Paolo Crepet Paolo Crepet Il coraggio. passione Vivere, amare, educare (Passion) (Courage: Living, Loving, Educating) ❝ A collection of stories and reflections which revolve around this sacred word, in all its meanings and declinations. ❞ ❝ Courage is the magic opportunity that allows one to understand the present and build One of the most insidious and underestimated the future. ❞ perils of our age is the progressive deterioration – if not extinction – of passion, the challenge launched to the world and to ourselves to continue to improve, to hope, to dream. But since without passion there One time courage – in the sense of physical is neither true life nor any vision of the future, Paolo bravery – was strictly the work of humans. Then Crepet refuses to surrender to such a loss. He has came machines, and they took over. It was no composed a collection of stories and reflections longer the armed warrior and his own hand, but drawn from his personal and professional machine guns, tanks, flamethrowers, fighter jets experience, which revolve around this sacred word, and bombers. Today, in the perhaps less risky in all its meanings and declinations. Details context of a hyper-technological society, it is not Because explaining to young people what passion Details Mondadori Strade Blu, 2017, 180 pages always necessary to expose oneself in order to means, the inner fire necessary to keep their desires Mondadori Strade Blu, October 2018, 222 pages communicate; virtual reality could become an alive and try to satisfy them, is today a fundamental apparently safe refuge. task if one wishes “to support them in discovering In his new book, Paolo Crepet offers parents, and developing oneself, nourishing the joy and educators and young people a hypothetical enthusiasm they entail, they mustn’t be anesthetized ❝ Crepet looks for the clichés about inventory of various forms of courage. The courage or dampened.” passion and turns them around. ❞ to educate, to say no, to start over, to be indignant, And since examples are worth more than words, Corriere della Sera to be afraid, to write, to imagine, to create. An the book is embellished by the testimonies of inventory as association of ideas, a useful exercise three paradigms of passion: Paolo Fresu, an for stimulating adults and those about to become extraordinary jazz musician acclaimed all over the adults so as to muster up the strength, nerve and world; Alessandro Michele, who revolutionized the stamina life requires of us every day. international fashion scene, and Renzo Piano, one of the most celebrated architects of all time. Three men, very different in age, education and biography, but united by an unmistakable characteristic: the About the author indomitable enthusiasm that animates their work Paolo Crepet was born in Turin in 1951. He is a psychiatrist and a sociologist, and he has and the absolute loyalty to the dreams of their youth, been the scientific director of the “Scuola per which nurtured their work and brought it to fruition. genitori” (Parenting School) since 2004. Their stories – marvelous ferries that transport us His most recent book are Elogio dell’amicizia and preserve the hope of an amazing life – teach us (2012), Impara a essere felice (2013), Il caso that passion is based on stubbornness, tenacity and della donna che smise di mangiare (2015), Baciami senza rete (2016), Il coraggio (2017), an irrepressible urge for freedom. It is not an easy Passione (2018). journey, nor is it for everyone, but the destination is @PaoloCrepet so special that everyone has the duty to demonstrate ph © Oliviero Toscani © Oliviero ph whether they have the courage to face it. 60 61 Concita De Gregorio Concita De Gregorio mi sa che fuori è primavera Cosa pensano le ragazzze (I Think It’s Spring Outside) (What Girls Think)

A woman who has lost her husband is a widow; a A world of thousands of women represented child who has lost his parents is an orphan, but and recounted through a single, extraordinary what do we call a parent who has lost a child? voice.

I Think It’s Spring Outside is the story of Irina, a To the men who say, “I’ve never understood woman who has not forgotten her painful past; women and I never will,” this book is for you. on the contrary, she holds it close to her chest like To the women who say, “It could only happen to a flower. Only four years ago, Irina had a serene, me; I’m the one who screws up,” this book is for orderly life. A husband, twin daughters. But you. It is a map for deciphering the girls of our then the serenity cracked. Her marriage ended, time, an amulet to keep from losing your way, an she and her husband agreed to share custody of antidote to fear. the girls. And on an ordinary weekend , Alessia “For two years I talked to thousands of women, and Livia went to stay with their father for the from ages six to ninety-six, but mostly teenage weekend – but never came home. Mathias was girls, young women. I asked all of them the same found dead in southern Italy a few days later, of questions: What is important to you in life? How Details an apparent suicide. The six-year-old twins have do you get it? What do you do when you don’t get Details A novel, Feltrinelli 2015, 128 pages Einaudi 2016, 140 pages Premio Ninfa Galatea 2015 never been found. what you expect? In the replies the central theme From the terrible facts of the true story of Irina is always love. Love and sex, love and desire, Foreign rights: [email protected] ❝ Lucidi and Mathias Schepp, Concita De Gregorio betrayal, family, the body, love and money. It I wouldn’t change anything about Foreign rights sold in has created a powerful and absorbing narrative was a symphony of voices really listened to: eyes me, not even my scars. I love my scars. Spain and Latin America (Anagrama). that evokes the full spectrum of emotion and seen with eyes, laughs and tears, confessions They’re a big part of who I am, why ❞ existence for this mother mercilessly deprived of and secrets. These stories form an orchestra of should I hide them? her children. different instruments playing the same music. Beatrice Vio, paralympic fencing gold And from this choir of words my stories were medal winner About the author born. They were born from reality, but they Concita De Gregorio is a journalist and a writer. She has been writing open up to the freedom of imagination; from a for la Repubblica for many years, where she now writes the column fragment of truth, lives and worlds unfold.” Invece Concita. She has been the editor of l’Unità from 2008 to 2011. From Concita De Gregorio’s extraordinary She started the online project Cosa pensano le ragazze, which ran on research a world of thousands of women is Repubblica.it for one year from March, 8th 2016. She hosted the Rai represented and recounted through a single Tre tv program Pane quotidiano, created and hosts FuoriRoma (Rai voice that has understood their feelings and state of mind. The territory of research is Italy,

Tre) and hosted the 2017 daily reports Da Venezia è tutto from Venice Lovino © Fabio ph Film Festival. She is the author of Non lavate questo sangue (2001), but these women are citizens of the world and Una madre lo sa (2006), Malamore (2008), Così è la vita (2011), Io vi the voice of the author is universal. maledico (2013), Un giorno sull’isola. In viaggio con Lorenzo (2014), Mi This book has been an extraordinary success sa che fuori è primavera (2015), that in 2017 was adapted for the theatre in Italy, a long-seller at the top spots since its and acted by Gaia Saitta and directed by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, release date. Cosa pensano le ragazze (2016), that inspired the docu-film Lievito madre (2017), signed with Esmeralda Calabria, and Non chiedermi quando. Romanzo per Dacia (2016). @concitadeg 62 63 Luigi Guarnieri Luigi Guarnieri forsennatamente mr. foscolo IL SOSIA DI HITLER (Furiously Mr Foscolo) (Hitler’s Double)

A powerful novel about the horrors and the A passionate and adventurous literary journey folly of history, an epic and visionary fresco, a in the turbulent life of Ugo Foscolo. historical thriller, a grandiose and unforgettable voyage into the darkness.

A poet, a writer and a patriot, active from the late years of the Eighteenth Century to the Berlin, October 1945. Special agent L**** second decade of the Nineteenth, his life was as Gren***** of US counterespionage is an Ameri- controversial and mysterious as his work is now can charged with conducting a new investiga- acclaimed, recognised as one of the most brilliant tion into the life of Adolf Hitler. The official examples of neoclassicism and pre-romanticism version says that the Führer killed himself in in Italian literature. his bunker, but reports of the British Intelli- Luigi Guarnieri, with a fiercely ironic pen, vividly gence Service and the Soviet NKVD have not recreates the history of the man behind his art, yet clarified the real dynamic of the facts. The starting from his latest difficult years in England, interrogation of the Führer’s personal dentist, where the poet arrived in 1816 after his voluntary Dr. Greta von Freundin, has opened a new in- Details vestigative trail: Department H of the Reich’s Details A novel, La nave di Teseo, 15 March 2018 exile in Switzerland. A novel, Mondadori 2014, 264 pages 208 pages Through his eyes, we enter the London literary secret services, specializing in disguises, coun- society of the 1800s, also discovering its dark terfeiting, and special operations, had devel- Foreign rights soldi in About the author side, the pettiness, the triviality and the ruthless oped a secret plan to allow for Hitler to escape France (Actes Sud). Luigi Guarnieri was born in 1962 from the bunker. Codename: Operation Janus. and lives in Rome. Doctor of Human letters mechanisms that ruled it. Among the few at the University of Pisa and graduated at splendours and many miseries of life in London, Obsessed by the ghost of Hitler and that of his the Experimental Cinematography Centre the reckless expenses and the time in prison, double, agent Gren***** interrogates reticent in Rome, he wrote many theater and radio the strenuous defence of his dignity as a writer and ambiguous witnesses, travels to Germany, plays. He is the author of awarded novels, and the battles with the publishers, Foscolo’s life Austria, Argentina, Italy, Paraguay and Switzer- translated into many languages: L’atlante land. In the end he finds the traces of the aristo- criminale. Vita scriteriata di Cesare Lombroso flows furiously. The great love for Quirina and (2000, Premio Bagutta Opera Prima), Tenebre the faded marriage with Caroline, the writing crat Egon Sommer, the director of Department sul Congo (2001), La doppia vita di Vermeer of the Ortis and of the Sepolcri, Byron and H, and the equally mysterious Mario Schatten, (2004, Premio Selezione Campiello), La sposa Mazzini, the appearance of his daughter Floriana Hitler’s double: a genial little-understood musi- ebrea (2006), I sentieri del cielo (2008, Premio and the insidious illness that will lead him to cian, the sacrificial victim of a terrible machi- Grinzane Cavour 2009) and Una strana storia nation and two frightening dictatorships – first d’amore (2011), Il sosia di Hitler (2014). death: the incandescent portrait of a tormented man, inhabited by great passions and destined Nazism, then Communism. But when he writes to generate just as many, fiercely adverse to the his conclusive report, agent Gren***** by now world and therefore repaid by the world with the knows that there is never only one truth: be- same coin. cause nothing and no one, not even him, is A novel about the unbridled life of one of the what or who they seem to be. most beloved and least known authors of Italian literature, restless and damned like a hero of our

times. fiction 64 65 Ezio Mauro Alessandro Gallenzi l'anno del ferro e del fuoco il figlio perduto (The Year of Fire and Fury) (The Lost Son)

Russia, 1917. No one can stop the century’s blind A dark, forgotten historical event that momentum. Alessandro Gallenzi recreates with vividness in A great reportage through the streets, alleys and a novel pulsating with suffering and humanity. opulent palaces that saw the dusk of Tsarist Russia and Lenin’s revolution flare up. On the road that leads from Milan to Como, A hundred years after the Russian Revolution, for over a century an iron gate has marked the Ezio Mauro returns to the locations of the popular boundary between madness and sanity, between uprising that changed the course of history. the unchanging world of the mentally ill and In St. Petersburg he explores the royal palaces the one outside, where people are busy “making and the darkest corners, following the footsteps history”. of events, the forbidden stories and mysteries that It is 1933, Year XI of the Fascist Era, when marked the course of a grandiose and terrible Giuseppe crosses the threshold of Mombello’s year. The discovery of the city gradually turns psychiatric hospital. Left without a home or a into the story of events for which the city was a family, all he has is the hope that within those Details theater. In the palace of Tsarskoe Selo, Rasputin, walls he might be cured of the “falling sickness” Details Feltrinelli, October 2017, 256 pages the black monk, put a spell on Tsar Nicholas II and that at times takes over his body without warning. A novel, Rizzoli, 17 April 2018, 378 pages his whole court. The aristocracy that for centuries His days are marked by the emptiness of his ruled the endless territories of Holy Mother Russia ward and the hours he spends working in the now rushes headlong toward its ruinous decline. Director’s office – until he meets a dark-eyed boy About the author The streets become restive and tumultuous. Lenin of his age who claims to be “Benito Mussolini”, Alessandro Gallenzi (Rome, 1970) ❝ Everything that happened and Trotsky come back from exile, the Bolsheviks the Duce’s son. is a prize-winning translator, afterward began here. are organizing. Soon the train of history will Sectioned against his will in the ward of the a poet and a novelist. He is the founder Even though it seemed like upend everyone. “Raving Madmen”, Benito Albino Bernardi, of Hesperus Press, Alma Books and Alma Classics, and the successor a beginning, and was Ezio Mauro traverses the anger, fear and tragedy fearing that the nurses are going to poison of John Calder at the helm the end of the world. ❞ of a population exhausted by war and famine. He him, begins to show increasing signs of mental of Calder Publications. revisits the fury that gripped the soul of a city instability, because he knows he will never leave He lives in Richmond, London, and the history of a country, a fury that forever Mombello alive. He is not mad as everyone else with his wife and two children. changed their destiny. With the keen eye of a great in the hospital, he tells the others. But in that corrispondent, he creates a short-circuit between living hell all his cries are hopeless and futile. past and present that evokes in the places of the His only friend, Giuseppe, tries to give him a Revolution the same atmosphere of suffering, reason to fight on, and makes it his mission to tell struggle and hope for change that inspired and the truth about Benito’s ordeal – a dark, forgotten ignited it, leading to Terror. historical event that Alessandro Gallenzi About the author recreates with vividness in a novel pulsating with Ezio Mauro was born in Dronero (Cuneo). He is one of the most important suffering and humanity. journalist in Italy. He has been foreign correspondent from the Unites States and from Russia, and the editor-in-chief of la Repubblica for twenty years, from 1996 to 2016. He is the author of La felicità della democrazia. Un dialogo (2011), with Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Babel (2015), his dialogue on democracy with Zygmunt Bauman, L'anno del ferro e del fuoco (2017), L'uomo bianco (2018) @eziomauro 66 67 Sergio Luzzatto Sergio Luzzatto i bambini di moshe. PARTIGIA Gli Orfani della shoah (Primo Levi the Partisan) e la nascita di Israele (Moshe’s Children. Orphans of the From the reconstruction of a violent episode Holocaust and the Birth of Israel) in the brief adventure of Levi the partisan, Sergio Luzzatto tells a story of resistance as A tale of redemption and illusions. a new way of reconstructing the story of the Resistance. This is the story of the surprising number of With painstaking research and an intense nar- children who escaped the Final Solution, some rative urge, the historian traces the formation of 700 youngsters taken in at Selvino, near Bergamo a band of partisans and the reprisal of the Salo in northern Italy, to what was then the largest forces after the armistice of September 8, 1943. Jewish orphanage in Italy and one of the largest In doing so, he sheds light on the dilemma that in Europe. It is also the story of Moshe Zeiri, the young men of that time had to face, their who assumed responsibility for these orphans passions and the reasons compelling them to of the Holocaust, and created the conditions for rebel against the Fascists. Luzzatto tells the sto- them to have a second life in the Promised Land. ries of many forgotten characters in the official Moshe, trained as a carpenter, a man with a gift history. One of them, in his own way, is Primo for the stage, belonged to a small group of young Details Details Levi: here a different Levi from the “authorized” An essay, Einaudi, January 2018, 380 pages Zionists from Eastern and Central Europe who An essay, Mondadori 2013, 376 pages figure of the current biographies. We find a sor- had emigrated to Palestine in the 1930s, and rowful Levi, who, before becoming a witness of About the author would return to Europe between 1943 and 1945 Sergio Luzzatto teaches Modern History at the Final Solution of the Jewish problem, had to fight as volunteers with the British forces the University of Turin. He is the author of been a witness to the harsher aspects of a civil driving up the Italian peninsula. After a dramatic Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular war. Age (Metropolitan Books, 2010), which won meeting with some young survivors, Moshe built the prestigious Cundill Prize in History; of a sort of republic of orphans at Selvino. ❝ A wide range and source-oriented study on Levi’s secret. ❞ The Body of Il Duce: Mussolini's Corpse and the The story of Moshe’s children is above all a tale of Fortunes of Italy (Metropolitan Books, 2005), of Süddeutsche Zeitung Primo Levi’s Resistance. Rebels and Collaborators redemption, but it's also a tale of illusions. After the in Occupied Italy (Metropolitan Books, 2016), war of independence of 1948, the Selvino kibbutz’s ❝ Levi’s ‘ugly wartime secret’ uncovered. ❞ published in France by Gallimard (Partigia, utopian ideals would come in conflict with new The Times 2016) and in Spain by Debate (Partisanos, (and brutal) forces in the nascent state of Israel. 2015), i bambini di Moshe. Gli orfani della With narrative verve and scholarly acumen, Shoah e la nascita di Israele (Moshe’s Children. ❝ The most in-depth account of the most formative experience of Levi’s outside Orphans of the Holocaust and the Birth of Israel, Sergio Luzzatto reconstructs a chapter of the of Auschwitz. ❞ 2018), Max Fox o le relazioni pericolose (2019). Holocaust as picaresque as it was tragic, a story The New Republic whose outlines are almost as broad as the master account of the Jews who were drowned and those who were saved.

❝ A story that’s thrilling and upsetting at the same time. ❞ Corriere della Sera

❝ Foreign rights sold in This individual and unique story is also a collective France (Gallimard), epic and a portrait of a generation. ❞ Spain and Latin America (Debate), Il Sole 24 Ore USA and UK (Metropolitan Books). 68 69 Federica Manzon Elena Stancanelli la nostalgia degli altri La femmina nuda (The Nostalgia of Others) (The Nude Female)

❝ You cannot stop reading this book. ❞ A novel on the power of stories, as in IT by Stephen King and A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter. Anna is a beautiful, intelligent woman with an interesting job. But all of a sudden none of this is of any use. After five years her love affair ❝ There is no one harder to rescue than a couple with David has sunk into a web of betrayal, lies who have ruined each other. ❞ and blackmail. Her life is falling apart, and her obsession takes the place of every other thought. Lizzie is fickle, self-centred, charming, and reckless: Anna begins to compulsively check David’s a natural-born dictator. Adrian is shy, clumsy, and cellphone, read his chats and explore his social incapable of daring, yet led by dangerous desires. network presence. She becomes hysterical, They come to know each other at the Aquarium, insomniac and doesn’t eat; she smokes and gets a large entertainment company, a place where drunk every night to be able to get some sleep. feelings and dreams are transformed into digital This story is her confession, in the form of a letter, Details worlds. to Valentina, her dearest friend, who has watched A novel, Feltrinelli, April 2017, 224 pages her destroy herself for the entire year, night after Details Instead of dating, they write each other every La nave di Teseo 2016, 160 pages night: a problem for two people who believe that night. Anna tells all, with no hang-ups. The Shortlisted for Premio Strega 2016 ❝ The tale of a lost generation, who by making a story beautiful they can make it real. humiliating and ridiculous details, her lookouts Premio Ninfa Galatea 2016, Premio Caccuri 2016 ❞ grew up trapped between two worlds. But who is Adrian really? A devoted lover, or a while spying on the other woman, her whole Film rights optioned by Taodue La Repubblica pitiless tyrant? A real person or a fake? Above all, morbid obsession. Anna resembles all of us who Foreign rights sold in what does Lizzie know about him? Why isn’t she fight this paradoxical war called love. At times we France (Stock), Germany (Berlin), ❝Literary love: the most dangerous of all. ❞ scared when she realizes the inconsistencies in win, more often we lose. The only thing we can The Netherlands: (Wereldbibliotheek), Corriere della Sera his story? always count on, the only thing that can show us Spain and Latin America (Anagrama). In the background, a vivid Milan – with its our limits, our needs, is our body. And Anna will About the author About the author quirks, rooftops and party nights, alcohol and grab hold of her body to beat the pain. Elena Stancanelli was born in Firenze. She is Federica Manzon was born in Pordenone and is drugs – and a wild and poetic Trieste, a place the author of novels and stories, and a regular a foreign fiction editor at Mondadori. She is the ❝ people are compelled to leave. Milan is glamour Elena Stancanelli has found the words to go contributor to several newspapers. Among author of the novels Come si dice addio (2008) ❞ her works: Benzina (1998), which became a and ambition; it’s a sparkling dinner table deep in self-annihilation. and Di fama e di sventura (2011), which was Il Foglio film in 2001, Le attrici (2001), Un uomo giusto awarded the Premio Rapallo Carige, the Premio full of smart people ready to sell their dearest (2011), and the short stories included in the Campiello Selezione Giuria dei Letterati, and the desires to climb the company ladder. Trieste ❝ Simply, all this happens: someone heals, anthologies Ragazze che dovresti conoscere Premio Asti d’Appello. @federicamanzon is the promise of real life, of life as it should someone gets hurt. And someone can write it. ❞ (2004), Figuracce (2014) and Smash (2016). be and must be, but also an unsustainable la Repubblica @elenastanka promise that makes you feel all that is missing. A limpid and compelling tale about identity and the necessity of hiding it, about a time in which the truth is always behind a screen and authenticity seems outdated, but above all a story about how hard it is to understand each other when we’re in love, or when love is only a beautiful story. 70 71 Beatrice Masini Beatrice Masini TENTATIVI DI BOTANICA i nomi che diamo alle cose DEGLI AFFETTI (The Names We Give to Things) (The Watercolourist)

This novel speaks of caring for other people, of A sophisticated exploration of a young nine- good mothers and bad children or vice versa, teenth-century woman’s search for freedom. of the importance you need to give to your ac- tions and the words you use to define them.

In her first novel for adult readers, Beatrice When you wish for something distractedly you Masini, a much appreciated and internationally often wind up getting it without knowing what translated author of children books, draws to do with it. That’s what Anna - a forty-year- a rich portrait of family and social life in the old editor and ghostwriter - discovers when a time of Italian Risorgimento. Bianca, a gifted famous author of young adults books she’d met young watercolor artist, after her father’s death some years before, Iride Bandini, dies and leaves moves to a magnificent villa near Milan. She has her an inheritance: a small house in the country been invited by the owner, a famous poet who with a view of Lake Garda. practices experimental horticulture, to illustrate When she first gets to the countryside Anna is Details all his exceptional plants. Bianca becomes soon busy with things to do and making acquaintances. Details A novel, Bompiani 2013, 336 pages A novel, Bompiani 2016, 224 pages Premio Selezione Campiello 2013 part of his large family, but following her naïve Tiziano, the master builder, the writer’s former Premio Internazionale Alessandro Manzoni 2013 curiosity will take her too far into the territory of secretary and chaperone, a rug merchant from ❝ Things, meaning all of existence, hidden secrets, of untold truth and of love. Iran; an unconventional peasant couple and their need something to identify them two children, a young enthusiastic wine-grower. and bring them to us. ❞ ❝ There's something of Manzoni . . . there are the heartbeats of the youngest Brontë sister, Anne, The themes treated in this novel hark back to Avvenire with her Agnes Grey . . . and, as in Rowling's Casual Vacancy, children are the best part of the authors cited in the beginning of each chapter – story. ❞ Penelope Mortimer, Margaret Drabble, Jeanette ❝ An elegant and delicate book, la Repubblica Winterson, Sylvia Townsend Warner – as an in which the narration and descriptions implicit homage to speaking about love, work, (of landscapes, interiors, facial features) ❝ Bianca is reminiscent of both Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice and Jo March of Little motherhood, and the difficult, sometimes are based on amazement and ❞ Women. impossible balance they demand. enchantment – because only memory Il Sole 24 Ore can resist the river of time. ❞ Sette - Corriere della Sera ❝ A seducing novel, full of atmosphere. ❞ Le Monde des Livres About the author Beatrice Masini was born in Milan. She is a successful writer of books for children and teens, translated into over 20 languages. Working as an editor in an Italian publishing group, she also Foreign rights sold in translated books such as the Harry Potter saga by J. K. Rowling. France (Éditions des Deux Terres, Le Livre de Poche), Among her works, La spada e il cuore. Donne della Bibbia Canada (Fides), (2003, Premio Elsa Morante Ragazzi 2004); Signore e signorine. Spain (Salamandra), UK Corale greca (2002, Premio Pippi 2004). In 2004 she received the ph © Isabelle Boccon-Gibod © Isabelle ph and USA (Mantle-Macmillan). prestigious Andersen Prize as best children’s author of the year. Her first novel for the adult readership is Tentativi di botanica degli affetti (2013), followed by I nomi che diamo alle cose (2016), Più grande la paura (2019). 72 73 Paola Mastrocola Paola Mastrocola l'amore prima di noi la passione ribelle (The Love Before Us) (Rebel Passion)

Love myths, told like real stories. “Whoever studies is always a rebel.”

Myths are what remain after oblivion, ruin, passing No one studies anymore today. It’s for those time. Paola Mastrocola has found a miraculous doomed to defeat. It evokes the poet Leopardi, dimension for telling these infinite stories one who lost his youth, ruined his health and stayed more time: in this book, sumptuousness and alone as a dog, or Pinocchio selling his books weightlessness come together for the pure joy of the to go see the marionettes. It recalls school, reader; basically, she talks only of love. Love for a pimply teenagers, drudgery, boredom, duty. It’s man, a woman, a river, a star. Our illuminated part, the shadow that obscured the world, a crack the point in which our lives still touch something in the wall, fracturing and darkening our rich divine. Love for the world, just as it is. Each story pleasure-seeking will to live in the present. Study carries within itself a question which goes straight to has disappeared from our lives. And with it the the heart. What form can our love take? Can beauty pleasure of things done without thinking about be stolen? And why, at a certain age which we call what purpose they serve. The most incredible youth, do we refuse to concede ourselves to anyone, thing is that it doesn’t matter to anybody. Details Details A novel, Einaudi 2016, 320 pages and we play, hover in midair, in flight? Laterza 2015, 152 pages Love, as recounted by the Greeks, is heartbreaking. It isn’t just a feeling, it's more: the power that binds Foreign rights: [email protected] everything together, the knot which constricts us, ❝ Whoever studies is always a rebel. Someone who the sky above us, what determines us, what takes goes in the other direction with respect to the rest of away our freedom but gives us meaning, elevates the world, and in his or her way, goes against the us, nourishes our deepest substance as transitory current. Whoever studies must stop and stay put, thus ❝ … If I were to follow you, Orpheus, human beings, so attached to life, so loving… Thus, rendering themselves contrarian and subversive. [...] you would take me back to the usual life to tell these stories once again is like approaching a This book is dedicated to all the invisible rebels – to of days which end and begin again, and world when everything had a soul and sometimes the timid ones, the discontents, the introverts, the in the end leave us old, once again on the gods fell in love with us. outcasts, the scholars. ❞ the verge of departing. Love is distance, it feeds itself with inaccessible distances. I don’t have to live with you. It is perfect to love you in this darkness, where I don’t see you and I don’t have you: love is part of death. Like day is contained in ❝ About the author Daphne, Orpheus, Helen, Theseus, Ariadne, Paola Mastrocola has a very special voice among Italian contemporary writers and the night, like the sky embraces both the Psyche, Calypso, Pygmalion, Atalanta… moon and the sun… I have become the bestseller authors. After her début with the novel La gallina volante in 2000 (Premio The names of the ancient heroes and gods Calvino) she was shortlisted for the Premio Strega in 2001 for Palline di pane and sky. Love is forgoing you. ❞ don’t matter because, basically, they are us. © Giliola Chistè ph won the Premio Campiello in 2004 with Una barca nel bosco. She is the author of La Their stories are our stories. scuola raccontata al mio cane (2004), Che animale sei? (2007), Più lontana della luna (2007), La felicità del galleggiante (2010), Non so niente di te (2013), L’esercito delle We call them myths but they have the flavor, ❞ cose inutili (2015), La passione ribelle (2015), L’amore prima di noi (The Love Before Us, and the meaning, of our own lives. 2016), Leone (2018). Her books have been translated in France, Germany, Spain and Latin America, Portugal, Turkey and Japan. 74 75 Paola Mastrocola Paola Mastrocola Non so niente di te l'esercito delle cose inutili (I Know Nothing of You) (The Army of Useless Things)

❝ With grief and tenderness Mastrocola goes deep into that area of lack of knowledge in which A tender philosophical fable, deep and appealing. parents are irremediably stuck. ❞ l'Unità Paola Mastrocola drags us into an elsewhere inhabited by donkeys, books, tightrope walkers, In one of the most prestigious colleges at Oxford, coffee grinds, poets, postage stamp peelers and hundreds of people are waiting for a conference other amazing creatures. It’s the country of to get under way. After some minutes, dozens of useless things, according to Raimond the donkey, sheep walk in. They are led by a young Italian who in his youth was a stalwart beast of burden, economist, who suddenly begins his lecture but now has become old and useless. And there about the market crisis. What is he doing there? are the letters of Guglielmo, a young boy who Everybody is searching for an answer, including isn’t quite understood by his family – even his parents, convinced that their model son though he is distractedly loved – and a victim of was at Stanford finishing a Ph.D. With a tone the usual bullies in school. Guglielmo’s parents alternating from ironic to reflective, Paola adopted Raimond the donkey at a distance as Details Mastrocola gives form to the dream of a different a Christmas gift to their son. Now Guglielmo Details A novel, Einaudi 2013, 338 pages life, to the quest for a freedom that each one of us A novel, Einaudi 2015, 212 pages is writing to Raimond, confessing his secrets would like to achieve – even at the cost of giving Premio letterario Basilicata 2015 Foreign rights sold in to him, the injustices, both large and small, his something up. Germany (Carl’s Books), Turkey (Doğan). desires and dreams. Raimond learns how to read and transforms his rage into action. He understands that he can still be ❝ Insights into economy, society and cultural loneliness in a complex story written with a useful and sets off on a comeback. An army moves ❝ A fable with ironic, disenchanted, special grace… As a Dostoevskij’s progressive, Filippo Cantirami chooses moral resistance together with him in a spectacularly epic finale. and even sarcastic tones. ❞ ❞ instead of street protest. A moving and engaging story, which revolves Avvenire Corriere della Sera around a simple and decisive question: what is it that truly fills our lives? Even when you do the most ❝ With her understate writing, Paola ❝ ❞ In Mastrocola’s new novel, the questions that parents do not dare to ask to their children. useless thing in the world – whether it’s gathering Mastrocola brings the readers into an Vanity Fair shells, transplanting primroses, shuffling your feet other world, where they cry and laugh lazily, getting old, or loving someone in silence – as if they were talking about something ❝ The irony on the moral crisis of our society discloses surreal you can find the spark of life, a flash of meaning, that they concerns. ❞ ❞ and fairy effects. an unexpected start. Or even yourself. La Stampa tuttoLibri Paola Mastrocola shows us masterfully how whatever is old, worn out, marginal and eccen- ❝ The author enjoy making a fool of ❝ ❞ The hardest investigations of all: how to know our children. tric can be moved by a mysterious energy to fol- a intellectual family, that constantly Corriere della Sera low the road less travelled, where the useful and admire and show off its intelligence. ❞ useless can turn each other around and become La Repubblica ❝ ❞ The tale of a great falsehood. something new. la Repubblica

76 77 About the author Margaret Mazzantini Margaret Mazzantini was born in Dublin SPLENDORE and lives in Rome with her husband and four (Splendor) children. She is the author of Il catino di zinco (The Zinc Basin, 1994), Manola (1999), Non ti muovere (Don’t Move, 2001), which became Will we have the courage to be ourselves? a film directed by Sergio Castellitto starring Penélope Cruz in 2004, Zorro (2002), Venuto Barrio Rubio © Luis ph al mondo (Twice Born, 2008), adapted into This is what the main characters of this novel ask a film starring Penélope Cruz and Emile themselves: two young men, two incredible destinies. Hirsch by Sergio Castellitto in 2012, Nessuno One is restless and eclectic, the other carnal and si salva da solo (No One Survives Alone, tormented. A single identity to be put back together, 2011), adapted into a film by Sergio Castellitto like the tiles of a mosaic cast into the emptiness. starring Riccardo Scamarcio and Jasmine An unbreakable bond, at once violent and creative, Trinca in 2015, and Mare al mattino (Morning imposes itself as their own nature surges up in Sea, 2011, Premio Pavese, Premio Matteotti). them – a high wire spanning the abyss of an entire Her latest novel is Splendore (Splendor, 2013). existence. The two protagonists grow apart, geographically distant, and establish new bonds. The sentimental initiation of Guido and Costantino covers the ❝ Margaret Mazzantini is placing, with a Details seasons of life, infancy, adolescence, and the ravages steady hand, the seed of hope deep inside A novel, Mondadori, 2013, 310 pages of adulthood. They put everything in jeopardy, the darkest and most desperate acts of every other emotion, every hard-won certainty, humankind. ❞ even their own personal safety. And every phase of La Stampa life amplifies that nostalgia for the age of splendor, which the two men lived like warriors with broken ❝ Her way to describe adolescence and early Foreign rights soldi in lances. youth is so intense that it is hard to remain Bulgaria (Colibri), France (Laffont), Germany Margaret Mazzantini gives us a hypnotic novel, indifferent.❞ (DuMont), The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), suffused with a light that shoots you in the back, Poland (Sonia Draga), Romania (Polirom), Il Venerdì di Repubblica Russia (Azbooka), Slovenia (Mladinska Knjiga), advancing with a mad urgency in a narrative Spain and Latin America (Seix Barral), that goes against the grain, claiming the right to ❝ Mazzantini describes the inner life of her Sweden (Contempo), Turkey (Doğan). transform shame into beauty. In the end we each characters in a sophisticated and touching know that we can only be who we are. And the real way. A great novel. ❞ splendor is our singularly suffered diversity. Donna

78 79 Margaret Mazzantini Margaret Mazzantini NESSUNO SI SALVA DA SOLO MARE AL MATTINO (No One Survives Alone) (Morning Sea)

The everyday drama of love and disaffection in ❝ Mazzantini’s lyrical novel puts a human face on a contemporary couple. The sentimental auto- migration and displacement. ❞ biography of a generation. Booklist

A summer night at a table in a restaurant in Rome. Farid is a Libyan child who lives in the desert, A young couple with too many responsibilities with a gazelle as his best friend. Vito is a on their shoulders: two children to take care Sicilian boy who grew up listening to stories of, resentments and transgressions. Delia and told by his mother and his grandmother about Gaetano consider the possibility of starting how Gaddafi threw them out of Tripoli in the over together again. At the same time they are Seventies, together with many other Italians. seduced by the unknown. Neither the passion Between them the Mediterranean sea. Moving that marked the beginning of their relationship back and forth between the continents, this nor the rage they now feel have entirely subsided. deeply moving portrait focuses on two families and one stretch of water, and in terse, lyrical language, captures perfectly the dark, uncertain quality of our times. Details Details A novel, Mondadori 2011, 192 pages A novel, Einaudi 2011, 128 pages Premio Pavese, Matteotti, English Pen Award

Foreign rights sold in Albania (Ombra), Bulgaria (Colibri), France (Laffont), Germany Foreign rights sold in (DuMont), Israel (Kinneret), The Netherlands (Wereldbib- France (Laffont), Germany (DuMont), Israel (Kineret), liotheek), Poland (Sonia Draga), Romania (Polirom), Russia The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), Romania (Polirom), (Azbooka), Serbia (Plato), Spain and Latin America (Alfaguara), Russia (Azbooka), Serbia (Plato), Spain Turkey (Doğan), UK and USA (Oneworld). and Latin America (Alfaguara), Sweden (Lindelöws), Turkey (Doğan), UK and USA (Oneworld).

80 81 foreign Margaret Mazzantini editions Venuto al mondo (Twice Born) Venuto al mondo An international bestseller, a sweeping portrait (Twice Born) of motherhood, loss and redemption.

Haunted by memories of Sarajevo’s four-year siege, Gemma reluctantly boards a flight from her native Rome to the war-scarred city with her sixteen-year-old son, Pietro. She hopes to teach Pietro about the city of his birth—and also about Diego, the father he never knew. Once in Sarajevo, however, Gemma is caught between the present and the past, and in her mind relives her love affair with Diego, their determination to start a family, and their deep connection to Sarajevo even under the looming threat of war. Details In this haunting and sophisticated novel, A novel, Mondadori 2008, 530 pages Mazzantini masterfully probes the startling Premio Campiello 2009 emotional territory of what makes a family— Foreign rights sold in in particular what it is to be a mother. As the Albania (Ombra), Bosnia (Buybook), Brazil fate of Sarajevo converges with Gemma’s all- (Companhia das Letras), Bulgaria (Colibri), consuming desire to have a child, we learn just Croatia (Algoritam), France (Laffont, 10/18), how strong and driven she really is, especially as Germany (DuMont), Hungary (Cartaphilus), Israel (Kinneret), Latvia (Apgads Atena), she endures an astonishing revelation that is both Macedonia (Antolog), Mexico (Grijalbo), heartbreaking and cathartic. The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), Poland Twice Born is a major motion picture directed by (Sonia Draga), Portugal (Bertrand), Romania Sergio Castellitto, starring Penélope Cruz and (Polirom), Russia (Azbooka), Serbia (BeoBook), Slovenia (Mladinska Knjiga), Spain and Latin Emile Hirsch. America-Castillan (Lumen, DeBolsillo), Spain- Catalan (Rosa dels Vents), Turkey (Doğan), UK (Oneworld), USA (Viking Penguin). ❝ It flows as smoothly as a sigh. ❞ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ❝ Vivid memories and powerful ❝ A book that honors the art of fiction. ❞ ❞ emotions… A stunning book. tuttoLibri Irish News ❝ Beautifully written and skilfully crafted. ❞ ❝ Mazzantini’s depictions of love, Publishers Weekly maternal and romantic, are powerfully ❞ raw. ❝ A stunning story of love and war. ❞ Kirkus Review Le Monde des Livres 82 83 Melania G. Mazzucco Melania G. Mazzucco la lunga attesa dell’angelo IL MUSEO DEL MONDO (The Long Wait for the Angel) (The Museum of the World)

To celebrate Tintoretto’s 500 years since his birth, in Fall 2018 a gigantic exhibition has opened in One of Italy’s most beloved narrators accom- Venice (Palazzo Ducale and Accademia), in many panies us in the discovery of her own personal european cities and now at the National Gallery “imaginary museum”. in Washington. Melania G. Mazzucco has also created and written the docu-film Tintoretto. A Every painting, every work displayed in a church Rebel in Venice, a Sky Arts original production to or gallery leaves a mark on those who look at it. be broadcasted in 60 countries all over the world. It is the beginning of an adventure. Created out of faith, or money, or vocation or love, the works In Venice, toward the end of the 16th century, of art that Melania G. Mazzucco has not been Jacomo Robusti – otherwise known as Tintoret- able to forget embrace five continents, from to – defends his achievements by any means. He antiquity to nowadays. Among the most beloved thrives on competition, bodily threat, and de- paintings, Mazzucco has selected fifty-two – ceit, while also finding inspiration for his paint- “only works by artists worth spending time with” ings in the extraordinary physical world that – and after a rigorous selection, she decided to Details surrounds him.Tintoretto’s illegitimate daughter A novel, Rizzoli 2008, 418 pages recount them in her weekly Repubblica column Details Premio Bagutta 2009 Marietta is his most perfect creation. A gifted over the course of a year. This volume gathers Einaudi 2014, 240 pages Premio Scanno 2009 musician and painter in her own right, Marietta the stories and the images of these works that Premio Città delle Rose 2015 Premio Biblioteche di Roma 2009 is a woman of acute intelligence, boundless crea- become presences, a mirror of thought, indelible Premio Tobino Viareggio 2011 Writer of the year tivity, and clear vision. From her illicit origins emotion and sparks of the world’s meaning. to her practice of dressing as a boy in order to The novel on the life observe her father’s world unrestricted, her life About the author of an extraordinary artist. takes on a mythical aura. Melania G. Mazzucco was born in Rome in 1966, The mystery of love and art in Italy’s Mazzucco explores the love between Tintoretto and made her debut in fiction with Il bacio della most fascinating city. and Marietta to the end. Her confident prose Medusa (1996), followed by La camera di Baltus draws the reader deep into the mystery of paint- (1998) and Lei così amata (2000). Her novel Vita was awarded the Premio Strega in 2003, named ❝ ❞ ing, into the world of two unforgettable artists, A hard-to-forget female character. in a New York Times Book Review Editors’ l'Espresso and into the mood of Italy’s most fascinating city, itself on the edge of an inevitable collapse. Choice and selected for the Publishers Weekly Foreign rights soldi in Top Ten Books of the Year. After Un giorno per- Bulgaria (Uniscorp), Denmark (Tellerup), Finland (Avain), France (Flammarion), Germany (Knaus Bertelsmann), fetto (2005), she wrote about Tintoretto the novel

Spain and Latin America (Anagrama). Molnar © Christina ph La lunga attesa dell’angelo (2008) and the essay Jacomo Tintoretto e i suoi figli (2009). Her most recent works are the novel Limbo (2012), Il bassotto e la Regina (2012), Sei come sei (2013) and Io sono con te. Storia di Brigitte (2016). She created and wrote the docu-film Tintoretto. A Rebel in Venice, a Sky Arts original production coming to cinemas in 60 countries all over the world, after the great success at the Italian box office. Her books have been translated in 27 languages. 84 85 Melania G. Mazzucco Melania G. Mazzucco IL BASSOTTO E LA REGINA io sono con te (Plato and the Queen) storia di Brigitte (I Am With You. The Story of Brigitte)

A Christmas tale, a story of love and friendship The story of a meeting and of recognition, of an about the strength and purity of feelings, both ordeal and a rebirth, the description of an Italy of animals and their human owners. that is both inhospitable and welcoming.

Plato is a dachshund who loves singing, he is For months, two women meet regularly; they kind of a poet, brave as a tiger. The Queen is a learn to know each other, understand each other proud Afghan greyhound with oblique eyes. and trust each other. Because only through the The Queen is kept prisoner by cruel smugglers eyes of each individual person you can see the and Plato would risk his own life to free her. A world. “I didn’t know where they were taking me. love affair between the two of them seems im- I only knew I would never return.” possible, but nothing is impossible in fairy tales Brigitte arrives at Termini train station one day – and maybe not only there, because “appearance at the end of January. She is cold and hungry is just a chance, the soul is our destiny”. A tender and doesn’t really know what country she’s in. and deep story told by a parrot that is sitting on She had fled hastily from Congo and was then Details a tree and understands all the languages of the unloaded like a burdensome package. The train Details Einaudi 2012, 106 pages world. A wonderful and moving tale about the station in Rome becomes her dormitory; garbage Einaudi 2016, 224 pages Illustrations by Alessandro Sanna becomes her dinner. And yet she used to be a Book of the Year Fahrenheit-Radio3 Premio Frignano Ragazzi 2013 courage of dreaming and the beauty of travelling. Foreign rights: nurse, the mother of four children she doesn’t [email protected] Foreign rights sold in even know if still alive. When she is completely Germany (Atlantik), Japan (Michitani). at the end of her tether, she is approached by a man. He scribbles an address on a paper napkin: ❝ These parrots, dogs and monkeys’ adventures the Centro Astalli, where she will find a meal, tell something about today’s life, without hero- human warmth and all the help she needs. It is ❞ ism and with no obligation of a moral lesson. a new beginning, but it is also the beginning of la Repubblica a new odyssey. Melania Mazzucco has put herself on the line in ❝ An intense and passionate story. ❞ every page, as a human being and as an author, tuttoLibri with a style that is precise, personal, and full of ❝ Mazzucco succeeds in telling a classic tale, restrained and explosive emotion. In Vita she had but set in a cruel contemporary world, taking narrated the epic of Italian emigration; in Io sono only realistic elements from the fantastic. ❞ con te she changes perspective: by looking these Il Messaggero men and women in the eye, we cannot help but recognize the desperate energy that we all have ❝ A new proof of Mazzucco’s eclectic writing.❞ in common when life has wrecked us and we are La Sicilia trying to get back on our feet.

87 Melania G. Mazzucco Melania G. Mazzucco SEI COME SEI Limbo (You Are How You Are) (Limbo)

A daughter and her two fathers: a normal family. A novel about losing yourself in a war and finding A wish fulfilled and a broken dream. The courage yourself in love. and tenderness to disarm prejudices. It’s Christmas Eve and twenty-seven-year-old There’s a little girl riding the Milan-Rome train – Manuela Paris is returning home to a seaside alone and on the run after a violent quarrel with town outside Rome. Years earlier, she left to be- her classmates. Eva is a proud girl who reads a come a soldier. Back then, Manuela was fleeing lot of books and has a gift for telling stories. She’s an unhappy, rebellious adolescence; with anger, only eleven years old, but already knows pain and determination, and sacrifice she painstakingly abandonment. Giose is an instinctive man, exu- built the life she dreamed of as a platoon com- berant and affectionate to a fault. He was a rising mander in the Afghan desert. Now, she’s fleeing star in the punk-rock scene of the 1980s, then fell something else entirely: the memory of a bloody in love with Christian, a young Latin professor. attack that left her seriously injured. Her wounds Eva is their daughter. To have her they had to go have plunged her into a very different and no less to Armenia, where Eva was born. Theirs was a insidious war: against flashbacks, disillusion- Details happy family, but it started to break apart with ment, pain, and victimhood. In chapters that tog- Details A novel, Einaudi 2012, 484 pages A novel, Einaudi Stile Libero 2013, 244 pages the sudden death of Christian. The former musi- gle between Manuela at home, grappling with her Premio Internazionale Molinello 2014 Premio Elsa Morante 2012, Premio Bottari Lattes cian was deemed to be an unsuitable guardian, so new life, and Manuela in Afghanistan, coming to Grinzane 2013, Premio Giacomo Matteotti 2013 he is holing up in a farmhouse in the Apennine ❝ terms with her role as a leader of fighting men Eva comes out as an authentic Mountains. Eva was entrusted to her uncle and Now a tv-movie produced literary heroin. ❞ and as a peacemaker in a country that doesn’t by fandango and rai cinema moved to Milan. She hasn’t seen him for some seem to want her help, Mazzucco limns a story of la Repubblica Foreign rights sold in time, but Giose is the first and only person Eva love and loss, death and resistance, in terms both thinks of when she flees from a frightening re- Denmark (Turbine), France (Flammarion), The ❝ A precise and deep writing, an educated, surprising and cathartic. Netherlands (Atlas-Contact), Poland (WAB ality. Almost miraculously she manages to find engaging eye… a precious reading. ❞ Foksal), Serbia (Sezam Book), Spain and Latin tuttoLibri him, and they leave together on a trip through America (Anagrama), Sweden (Contempo), Italy in which she discovers a lot about herself, USA and UK (Farrar Straus and Giroux). ❝ For 235 pages Sei come sei captures about her two fathers, the feelings that unite peo- the reader, making him suffer and hope ple beyond roles and laws, and the wonderful ❝ Mazzucco has proven herself to with this little girl. ❞ story to which she owes her life. be a gifted storyteller, able to touch Io donna Sei come sei is dramatic and entertaining, as fast- deeply the human soul.❞ paced as an adventure novel. With grace, tender- Le Monde ness and emotional depth, it tells the story of love between a father and a daughter, a love at once utterly unique and universal, with which each of us can identify.

MELANIA G. MAZZUCCO Foreign rights soldi in LIMBES Spain (Anagrama), Sweden (Contempo). Film rights optioned by Fandango. Flammarion 88 89 FOREIGN PUBLISHERS OF MELANIA MAZZUCCO'S WORKS Albania (Albas), Bulgaria (Uniscorp), Canada (HarperCollins, Harper Perennial), China (Horizon), Denmark a selection (Tellerup, Turbine, Palomar), Finland (Avain), France (Flammarion, J’ai lu, Editions du Club), Georgia (Sulakauri), of foreign Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Piper, Knaus, btb, Hoffmann und Campe), Greece (Diigisi, Modern Times), editions Hungary (Európa Könyvkiadó), Israel (Schocken, Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir), Japan (Michitani), Korea (Random House Corea), The Netherlands and, Belgium (Mouria, Atlas-Contact), Norway (Cappelen), Poland (Wab-Foksal), Romania (Polirom), Russia (Ast), Serbia (Mono j Manjana, Sezam Book), Spain and South America (Seix Barral, VITA Planeta, Anagrama), Sweden (Norsteds, Contempo), Turkey (Yapi Kredi Culture and Arts, Doğan Kitap), UK un GIORNO (Pushkin), US and UK (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Picador, Thornedike Press). PERFETTO

90 91 Andrea Molesini About the author La solitudine dell'assassino Andrea Molesini was born in 1954 and lives in Venice. He teaches Comparative (The Loneliness of the Murderer) Literature at Padua University. He is a poet, translator, author of children’s sto-

ries translated into many languages, and Nostri © Claudio ph The new novel by the author of Not All Bastards Are from Vienna, winner of the 2011 Campiello a sailor. He won the Premio Andersen Prize. Career Award in 1999, the Premio Mon- selice for literary translation in 2008 and the Premio Campiello in 2011. Northern Italy, Trieste. In 1968, a mysterious sixty- He is the author of the novels Non tutti year-old librarian, Carlo Malaguti, kills a stranger. i bastardi sono di Vienna (2010, Premio There is no apparent connection between the killer Campiello, Premio Comisso Premio and his victim. The state-appointed attorney, an Città di Cuneo Primo Romanzo, Premio intriguing woman with a hidden past, senses that Latisana 2011), La primavera del lupo the killer might be the victim of a conspiracy. But (2013), Presagio (2014). His last novel is at the trial Malaguti refuses to defend himself and La solitudine dell'assassino (2016). gets a life sentence. Twenty-one years later, Luca Rainer, an esteemed translator of Shakespeare and Rilke, unhappy in his fickle love affairs and lost in a fruitless search books by andrea molesini Details for himself, meets the murderer who is about to A novel, Rizzoli, September 2016, 368 pages be released from prison for good conduct and old age. Rainer is the son of the lawyer who defended ❝ It’s like a chess game of fine Malaguti, an absent mother, who was in and out psychological insight. ❞ Translation rights of psychiatric institutes. Marcella Marini at Sellerio Corriere della Sera The two men become close friends, forcing Rainer [email protected] to explore the old man’s past. Malaguti is still ❝ A rocky writer. ❞ imperious despite his years and just as bold in his La Stampa thoughts. The past hides a terrible secret, which has to do with the death of a Jewish girl wanted by the ❝ A masterly novel about the SS, with whom Malaguti was desperately in love contradictions of justice. ❞ Non tutti i bastardi La primavera del Presagio in the spring of 1944. Was Malaguti the one who sono di Vienna lupo 2014 Corriere del Veneto betrayed her? Rainer will agree to tell his friend’s 2010 2013 story, and by “translating” it he will become the narrator who discovers himself as a citizen of the Praise for Andrea Molesini's previous books: ❝ world’s labyrinth. I have lived as a free man ❝ ❞ The Loneliness of the Murderer is a literary novel Mr. Molesini has the true novelist’s ability to bring scenes and individuals immediately and freedom devastated me. ❞ with the rhythm of a thriller. The details slowly before our eyes, so vividly that they take possession ofour imagination. reveal the whirlpool of darkness that envelops The Wall Street Journal the soul of the librarian evoking the tragedy of ❝ the Shoah. Yet the book is an ode to life and its With formidable talent, Molesini gradually reveals a universe of love and hate, patriot- ❞ inescapable beauty and energy, mixing love and ism and everyday heroism. loyalty, cowardice and betrayal, fear, courage, Le Monde escape and passion.

92 93 Andrea Molesini non tutti i bastardi sono di vienna (Not All Bastards Are from Vienna)

Winner of the prestigious Campiello Prize, this international bestseller tells the riveting story of an Italian family whose courage is put to the test when their villa is requisitioned by enemy troops during the First World War.

Andrea Molesini’s exquisite debut novel – winner of the prestigious Campiello Prize – portrays the depths of heroism and horror within a Northern Italian village toward the end of the Great War. In the autumn of 1917, Refrontolo – a small community north of Venice – is occupied by Austrian Premio Campiello 2011 soldiers as the Italian army is pushed to the Piave Premio Comisso 2011 Premio Città di Cuneo Primo Romanzo river. The Spada family owns the largest estate 2011 in the area, where orphaned seventeen-year-old Premio Latisana 2011 Paolo lives with his eccentric grandparents, he- adstrong aunt, and a loyal staff. With the battlefront nearby, the Spada home ❝ Wonderful. ❞ becomes a bastion of resistance, both clashing La Stampa and cooperating with the military men im- posing on their household. As his family suc- ❝ Wonderfully alive – often terribly so cumbs to acts of jealousy and betrayal, love and – as a wartime adventure and story of hate, Paolo is recruited to help with a compro- youth arriving at manhood. ❞ mising covert operation and his life is put in The New York Times irrevocable jeopardy. ❝ Take Hemingway’s masterpiece A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque’s classic Internationally celebrated and garlanded with All Quiet on theWestern Front, and cross these two war depictions with the portrait of ❝ An excellent war novel, as well as awards, Not All Bastards Are from Vienna is an Italian aristocracy in Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard... [Not All Bastards a powerful depiction of a family’s unforgettable portrait of the erosion of tradition Are from Vienna] is a powerful and effective blend of Bildungsroman, armchair travel, strength and mankind’s justification and the fall of an Italian aristocratic family, who- historical document, and war drama, with touches of a thriller. ❞ for war’s barbarity, movingly told and se personal battles burn with more fire than tho- Kultur full of vivid imagery. ❞ se of the war happening around them. Publishers Weekly ❝War and Peace meets The Leopard in a novel set among Italian aristocrats during the Great War… Rich and moving… Molesini has the true novelist’s ability to bring scenes ❝ A thunderbolt of a debut novel… a and individuals immediately before our eyes, so vividly that they take possession of vast fresco, both family chronicle and our imagination… This is a very fine novel indeed, a historical novel that speaks to the story of the Great War… evoked with present as powerfully and clearly as it does of the past. ❞ finesse and erudition. ❞ The Wall Street Journal L'Express

94 95 Enrico Palandri Gabriele Pedullà l'inventore di se stesso Lame (The Inventor of Himself) (Blades)

❝ A sharp and surprising book. ❞ ❝ Son, remember me in your son. ❞ Corriere della Sera ❝ A homage to a Rome on the run. ❞ Venice. Gregorio Licudis arrives at the hospital La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno where his son and his daughter in law have just had their first child and suggests that the baby be On one of the most beautiful hills of Rome, given his name. It’s a name that emerges out of overlooking the maze of domes and terraces the family’s distant past, echoing down a long line of the eternal city, a group of skaters meet of princes, admirals and patricians of the former every Sunday to perform an odd ritual made Republic of Venice. The family is taken aback: of freedom, Eighties songs, and vintage clothes. why is this elderly professor suddenly professing Ruggiero and Olimpia - a happily married couple allegiance to a world that has disappeared? He in their late thirties - find themselves hypnotized had never, up to this point, been prone to family by the circular movements of the skaters, which nostalgia, living a successful life as an academic suddenly bring them back to their teenage years. Week after week they are dragged into a never- Details and writer. Details ending dance in which real life is only a distant A novel, Bompiani, September 2017, 160 pages The son at first rejects his father’s demands. He’s A novel, Einaudi, 2017, 160 pages a businessman with quite different priorities, but echo – whirling between the illusion of eternal while he is travelling for his company in eastern Foreign rights sold youth and the incessant passage of time. While Europe, he begins to pick up the trails of his World English (Seagull Books). the mild spring afternoons leave room to a ancestors. From Constantinople to Moscow, from sweltering summer, things are bound to change Astrakhan to Venice. forever. ❝ It hyptnotizes you right away. ❞ Old wounds begin to surface: historical With a fluid, witty prose, Pedullà relentlessly La Gazzetta del Sud ❝ Splendid, multifaceted, restless, and personal disasters such as the fall of chronicles the erosion of a complex system of intense… everywhere there is poetry, Constantinople in 1453 and the Second World small events and minute details: ordinary life. the ability to describe life, War have marked the Licudis, the family at the ❝ A love story, you would say, for its disasters, its consolations. ❞ centre of this narrative. the skaters, for the relief from the ❝ A very contemporary book… a gift both to the Carlo Rovelli As the revelations pile up, both personal and mediocrity of life, for the illusion of common reader and the more sophisticated one… historical perspectives are turned on their ‘lifting off the ground’. ❞ A tried-and-true engine to dissect reality. ❞ heads. What is the difference between being a La Gazzetta di Parma Quotidiano del Sud somebody and being a nobody? What meanings do we attach to the possession of a profession ❝ The model of Calvino, the last Calvino, emerges and a status, and then the loss of both? What is dominantly but is not cumbersome. Pedullà’s the real legacy, in a family of runaway princes, of writing flows beautifully. ❞ being oneself? And finally, what does it signify Film & TV to invent oneself? About the author About the author Gabriele Pedullà was born in Rome, where he lives. He is Enrico Palandri, born in Venice, is a writer, professor and translator. He is the author of professor of Italian Literature and Contemporary Literature at eight novels, one collection of short stories and four essays. He has been awarded several the University of Rome 3 and a regular contributor to the literary prizes and translated in many languages. Four of his novels have appeared in English. He supplement of Il Sole 24 Ore and the bimonthly magazine Il Caffè lives between Venice and London. illustrato. He has published works of fiction and non fiction. 96 97 Francesco Piccolo Francesco Piccolo Momenti di trascurabile momenti di trascurabile felicità infelicità (Moments of Negligible Happiness) (Moments of Negligible Unhappiness)

A witty phenomenology of joyful living, an Francesco Piccolo takes the moments of sadness international bestseller. that make up a life and composes them into a wickedly funny portable encyclopedia.

Is it possible to be happy about other people un- After the great success of Moments of Negligible happiness? What does Francesco Piccolo mean Happiness, Francesco Piccolo is back to his when he describes with his wonderful way of light-hearted exploration of the moments that writing – part literature, part humor, part self- make up a life, but this time he is taking them on analysis – his personal Moments of Negligible from the wrong side. He sifts through his days Happiness? Moments that nest anywhere, ready to examine how each mishap, even the most to pounce – moments that open your eyes to a annoying, hides something priceless: a dazzling section of life not previously acknowledged. sparkle of fun and vitality. Whether it’s sharing A merciless catalogue of the usually unmention- an umbrella with someone, offering it up kindly able pleasures, tics and fragilities that are familiar only to have both of you wind up soaking wet; Details to all of us, sooner or later. or admitting you don’t remember anything of Details Einaudi 2010, 136 pages what you learned in school; or acknowledging Einaudi 2015, 143 pages Momenti di trascurabile felicità is now a film that children’s performances are tedious, and Foreign rights sold in directed by Daniele Luchetti and scripted by Foreign rights sold in Albania (Fjala), Bulgaria (Ciela), Francesco Piccolo that we do not love our children in the same Albania (Fjala), Spain and Latin Egypt (Beba Editions), France (Denoël), way, simply because each of them is different. America (Anagrama). Germany (Insel), Russia (Corpus), ❝ Piccolo has published delightful books. Every day each of us experiences thousands of Spain (Anagrama), Now he has surpassed himself. ❞ forms of negligible (though not insignificant) The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek). El Ideal Gallego unhappiness. But the doubt often arises that it might be like a game of pick-up sticks: if I take ❝ It’s as if you adopt a microscope ❝ Piccolo’s comic indulgence is just away the thing I like least from the person I love, for the visible reality: what is negligible, as precise as his comic ruthlessness. ❞ what I like best might also disappear. even though you don’t realize it, la Repubblica produces effects that are anything ❞ ❝ A book of wicked truths, and unjustified yet but negligible. authentic pleasures. Small and private, Raffaele La Capria but also universal. ❞ ❝ Vanity Fair Francesco Piccolo has a magic touch, he makes you feel that life is a serious thing, always, especially when things are funny. ❞ Tiziano Scarpa

98 99 About the author Francesco Piccolo Francesco Piccolo was born in Caserta and lives in IL DESIDERIO DI ESSERE Rome. He is the author of Scrivere è un tic. I metodi degli COME TUTTI scrittori (1994), Storie di primogeniti e figli unici (1996), E se c’ero, dormivo (1998), Il tempo imperfetto (2000), (Wanna Be Like Everyone) Allegro occidentale (2003), L’Italia spensierata (2007), La separazione del maschio (2008), Momenti di trascurabile felicità (2010), Il desiderio di essere come tutti (2013, “On June 22, 1974, at the 78th minute of a soccer Premio Strega 2014), Momenti di trascurabile infelicità (2015), L’animale che mi porto dentro (2018). He has match, I became a Communist.” written award-winning works for cinema, theater and radio, and is a regular contributor to the Corriere della Sera. He scripted the tv series My Brilliant Friend, based It’s the 1974 World Cup, the historic quarterfinal on the international bestseller by Elena Ferrante, and the match pitting West Germany against East Ger- movie by Daniele Luchetti Momenti di trascurabile felicità, many. A ten-year-old boy sitting in front of the based on his books. TV with his father suddenly realizes he’s cheer- ing for the wrong team. “While the stadium was silenced, between my armchair and my father’s, a small, invisible, scarcely understood wall started to rise up as if we were in the center of Berlin.” Each man lives at least one love story that lasts throughout his life: the one with his own time ❝ ❞ Details and country, his marriage (often stormy) be- A twenty years long existential journey into the mistakes of politics. A novel, Einaudi 2013, 272 pages tween private and public life. The great chal- la Repubblica Premio Strega 2014 lenge of this funny, very serious and provocative ❝ Piccolo gives voice to the individual and political feelings of a committed man. ❞ personal and political novel is to tell about eve- Corriere della Sera rything that contributes to making us who we are. If it’s true that it takes a lifetime to become ❝ With sincerity and without any presumption, Piccolo shows us how to stay here, in this ourselves, then when we look back we notice the world and in this country. ❞ road is well signposted, a trail of insights, mo- Paolo Sorrentino ments, shocks and mistakes: a procession of days . strung together. Francesco Piccolo has written a book that is both anomalous and foreboding, a novel about the political left of our times as well as a tale of Foreign rights sold in individual and collective education. It will be Croatia (Hena Com), Macedonia (KSC), The Netherlands (Wereldbibliotheek), Serbia (Laguna). impossible not to recognize yourself in these pages (either by affinity or opposition), as you read about the words and things, the revelations and difficulties of our personal history – with the awareness springing from each page that everything matters.

100 101 Marco Polillo Marco Polillo The zottìa’s novels chi vuole uccidere fred il tacchino? corpo morto, 2009-2014 (Who Wants to Kill Fred the Turkey?) Il pontile sul lago, 2011 Villa tre pini, 2012 ❝ Il convento sull’isola, 2014 Enea Zottìa is a first rate policeman, A tender and funny Christmas story that ❞ Acque amare, 2016 a great romantic, a little big Gatsby. will conquer the heart of readers with the Sette irresistible congeniality of his protagonists.

❝ The cases to be solved come and go, women, perhaps, too. The familiar mys- Certain days start off so badly that only a tery novels by Polillo remain, and they are miracle could make them right. Even though a good company. ❞ it’s Christmas Day, and at Giulia’s villa on Lake La Stampa Orta everybody is getting ready to open the gifts Set in the enchanting frame of Lago d’Orta, and have a big dinner, Cat, the faithful friend of in the northern provinces of Italy, with ❝ A well constructed, enjoyable, page- the deputy commissar Aeneas Zottia, is nervous: its beautiful scenery and atmosphere, its turning novel. ❞ what are those colored balls doing there, hanging wealth of colour and picturesque effects, il Venerdì off that strange tree next to his kennel? And what the bestselling mystery series featuring the a spiteful thing, forbidding him to play with commissioner Enea Zottìa, a man of sharp Details ❝ Polillo is able to mix up love and death; them… And who hid the bowl where he usually intuition, far away from technology but close Rizzoli 2017, 112 pages regrets and hopes; mystery, romance and eats breakfast? to the soul of people. Illustrations by Alessandro Sanna noir. You cannot buy class. ❞ A nuisance after the other for Cat, even though, The apparent calm of life on the lake Corriere della Sera he must admit it, the villa is really lovely and hides secrets and intrigues, revenge and the company is not that bad: Giampaolo, the suspicion, that lead to unexpected murders. mud-colored dog who is always busy rolling Commissioner Zottìa, the flawed hero around in the puddles, Sappo, the wisest feline created by the sophisticated and skilful pen in the neighborhood, with a thousand scars and of Marco Polillo, solves the most difficult adventures to tell, and then Fred, the legendary cases in an exemplary manner. Never turkey that because of his beauty has become a forgetting his love torments. pet and who should attend the party that night. But somebody wants to hurt him, and it may be just whoever made Cat’s bowl disappear. These are mysteries that only those who have nine lives and a courage far beyond their own size can solve…

About the author Marco Polillo was born and lives in Milan. After a career in publishing, he created his own publishing house, Polillo Editore, specialized in crime literature. He is the author of the series featuring the character of inspector Enea Zottìa: Testimone invisibile (1997), Corpo morto (2009), Il pontile sul lago (2011), Villa Tre Pini (2012), Il convento sull’isola (2014), Acque amare (2016) and Chi vuole uccidere Fred il tacchino? (2017). 102 103 Gabriele Romagnoli Gabriele Romagnoli solo bagaglio a mano coraggio! (Carry-On Only) (Courage!)

A metaphor of a way of living which urges the A personal catalogue of courageous men, a liberation from every single need. necessary exercise in philosophy of the existence.

Not to encumber: that’s one of the few perspectives In Courage! Gabriele Romagnoli draws up his that can be considered positive, effective, maybe own personal catalogue of courageous men, even morally and politically valuable in life. like Èric Abidal, the soccer player who won the Gabriele Romagnoli got to think about it in Champions League when he was diagnosed with Corea, while he was virtually dead, locked up in cancer only a few months earlier; Captain Rowan, a wooden crate for the purpose of an odd ritual- who was instructed to deliver a message to the experiment. In the claustrophobic silence of that leader of the rebellion in the heart of the Cuban coffin, here come the stories, the reflections, the jungle; Senator Ross, saving the presidency of obsessive thoughts about restraint. the United States with his vote; or even a literary The carry-on, for example. A baggage that character like Stoner, and his “no” that ends up requires a choice, an evaluation of the essential. defining a life and a career. Details The carry-on becomes metaphor of a way of Romagnoli wants the readers by his side, so that Details Feltrinelli 2015, 86 pages living which implies that loss is actually an asset, everyone can recognise the humility and the Feltrinelli 2016, 104 pages and urges the liberation from every single need, beauty of that kind of courage that makes life a Foreign rights sold in without fear of “without”. fair life. Foreign rights sold in Germany (Kösel), Spain (Atico de los libros). Spain (Atico de los libros). In Carry-On Only Romagnoli pinpoints a crucial From the author of Solo bagaglio a mano (Carry- theme of contemporary society and global On Only), here’s another necessary exercise in outliving, and writes one of his most flavourful philosophy of the existence. ❝ Among the many factors that make works, the story of a rebirth, of an awakening. Gabriele Romagnoli a good friend He does it without magniloquence. Without to anyone who loves reading arrogance. Without. ❝ Gabriele Romagnoli has an impressive ability to collect instants, (his news reports, his commentary, while always keeping an original point of view on the world. It is his novels), there’s the ability worth hearing him out even just for the rhythm of his blunt, essen- to never be predictable, the carefully tial writing, his wit and the diversity of his stories. ❞ cultivated gift for entertaining. ❞ Panorama la Repubblica

About the author Gabriele Romagnoli was born in Bologna in 1960 and is a journalist and a writer. ph © Alfredo Frediani ph He is the author of Navi in bottiglia (Mondadori, 1993), Louisiana Blues (2001), L’artista (2004), Non ci sono santi (2006), Un tuffo nella luce (Mondadori, 2010), Domanda di grazia (2014), Solo bagaglio a mano (2015), Coraggio! (2016), Senza fine (2018). 104 105 Rosaria Carpinelli Consulenze Editoriali Milan, Italy

[email protected] www.consulenzeditoriali.it @ConsulenzeEd Rosaria Carpinelli Consulenze Editoriali

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