Bollati Boringhieri

FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR 2018 Rights List

Mary Barbara Tolusso L’esercizio del distacco [The Practice of Parting] May 2018 176 pages (30.000 words) Novel English translation sample available

There are three of them: Emma, David, and her. They live in a boarding school, a few steps from a border immersed in woods and wind. We feel the weight of history, a Trieste that is never named, but that permeates the pages. Far from their parents, these teenagers grow up educated in order and in controlling their passions. Theirs is an exclusive triangle: an easy friendship with the exuberant Emma, a seductive competition with David, the boy with the sharp heart. The three love each other with the unreserved impulse of adolescence and with the terror of abandoning themselves to true love.

As long as they grow up within the protected walls of the school, life passes comfortably between study, sport, and walks on the park’s paths, under thin oak branches and watchful eyes. They do not ask themselves too much about their future, nor why their education is designed to face endless fates. They don’t imagine that their lives, once so intertwined, will be divided. Years later, only a photograph remains to connect them, as well as the mystery of their infinitely long and healthy existence. Almost nothing is left of the great friendship with Emma, of the love for David, or of the passion for Nicholas, the young anarchist encountered over the border. And yet they cannot help but chase that lost time, asking: what were they destined for, what becomes of their privilege in a world where the exclusive are ultimately excluded?

The Practice of Parting is above all a remarkable love story written in a unique prose, mournful and steeped in poetry. A visionary novel that exposes the most terrible of human desires—what drives us to dream of a longer existence, of an eternal love. It’s impossible not to think of Ishiguro. It’s impossible not to think, at the same time, that we are confronted with a unique voice, which will linger in the reader’s heart.

Rights licensed to: Danish, Forlaget Wunderbuch

«Tolusso excels in depicting an institution that reminds us of the colleges described by Musil and Walser, or of the atmosphere in Fleur Jeaggy’s novel Sweet Days of Discipline; she has a distinctive originality that shows through a sharp, crisp style and peculiar passages in the narrative. The novel assumes dystopian features, like a lot of today’s most interesting fiction, but most of all it is an exploration of desire that breaks the rules, crosses boundaries at its own risk and challenges the inevitability of time.» Helena Janeczek, winner of Premio Strega 2018, Tuttolibri, La Stampa Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

«There is a time when love and friendship are unconditional and life seems infinite. That is adolescence. You need to detach from it in order to live and face your own fragility and the shortcoming of dreams and feelings. If you wish to avoid that, death is the only option.» D di Repubblica

«L’esercizio del distacco is a novel that deserves credit and attention because it tells a brief story with care and precision; although concise, it manages to cover some of the nightmares of our times, allowing the reader to let them go.» Il manifesto

«At the centre of L’esercizio del distacco (…) there is a message that gathers strength not only from its content, but also from its varied and insistent repetition. The result verges more on the lyrical rather than the fictional, and is made effective by the genre-contamination technique that the author has mastered: when she writes poetry, she hints at profiles and storylines; when she writes in prose, she slows the pace or cuts off the narrative with a continuous lyrical variation of few and well defined patterns. Undeniably, Mary B. Tolusso is highly readable in both styles: her poetry touches glamorous themes, and her prose is built with a precise rhythm that soon becomes vivid, identifiable and enthralling. The vibe is elegant and modern, with sophistication reserved only for witty remarks: “We were a generation of sophisticated prisoners lining up at the showers or at the cafeteria, with plenty of rules and plenty of future”. » La Lettura – Il Corriere della Sera

«Mary Barbara Tolusso definitely knows how to play the notes of nostalgia.» Repubblica (Robinson)

«An elegant, poetic and powerful novel, that speaks to the reader with subtle vibrations (…) in a happy balance, the style is smooth yet endearingly restless, with lyrical nuances.» La Stampa (Tuttolibri)

«The first experiences are the most intense. It is impossible to replicate them. (…) Three kids in boarding school, their deep bond and its dissolution at the end of the school years. The idea – that dominates the novel – that while waiting for their life to start they were actually living it to the core without knowing it.» La Stampa

«A jewel». Il Tempo

«Emma, David and the main character share an indissoluble bond that carries the absolute certainty of adolescence. But adolescence is ruthless, and that connection is bound to fade away like everything else in this novel, because the feelings that prevail in boarding school are not carefreeness, camaraderie and happiness, but an awareness of the end, of a repressed longing that will never translate into eternity.» Il Giornale

Mary Barbara Tolusso was born in Pordenone. A greatly admired poet, this is her second novel.

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Matteo Cellini I segreti delle nuvole Disegni di Valerio Berruti [The Secrets of Clouds] Drawings by Valerio Berruti September 2018 143 pages (31.000 words) Novel Translation rights: Grandi & Associati

Pay attention to what I am about to say. Clouds are not what you think they are. At least, they’re not just what you think they are. Behind the clouds there are scads of babies. Tons of them. They’re waiting to be called to life, they’re waiting to be born. Soft and comfy waiting rooms of sheer whiteness. Don’t look so surprised – you were once there too! We all were. But no one remembers being there and looking down, longing for your parents to meet and get to know each other, fall in love and decide to bring you into the world. And that’s what happened, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. None of us would. The Secrets of Clouds tells the story of Tommaso and his family. A trip through the clouds and the small city of Urbania; across the sky and the green hills of Le Marche. The life of a baby before it is born, 30,000 feet in the sky, and the life that baby goes on to lead in his family – a typically happy yet unhappy crew. The Secrets of the Clouds is a fable that will make you laugh and move you. Its linguistic grace touches the heart. Valerio Berruti’s illustrations are magic. Together, words and images bring to life the world of the babies beyond the clouds and their secrets, as they yearn for things they’ll never have, amid excitement and despair. When the going gets tough, those babies are sure to send down rain and hail. On us. A reminder that all this is a miracle, and that makes everything we go through each and every day something miraculous.

«A fable, yet much, much more than that. The most ambitious of cosmogonies insofar as it begins long before our birth as human beings, up there among the clouds from which we wish to descend at all costs to address the somewhat complicated business we call life and the family.» Irene Bignardi, Vanity Fair

«An enchanting story.» MarieClaire

«A story that has all the gentleness of The Little Prince and a language that warms the heart, is accessible to all, and offers the most imaginative of answers to the question of all questions: where do we come from?» D. di Repubblica

«A magical, dreamy book. A fable for adults.» Nadia Terranova, Robinson, la Repubblica

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«Matteo Cellini has written a book akin to a hymn to life, to the family, to the bond between brothers and sisters. With his simple, original story, he has found the words to sing the beauty of being in the world and the deepest meaning of what we call the family. With a surprising and touching finale.» Famiglia Cristiana

Letter from the editor, Andrea Bajani

Dear Friends,

This is a story about clouds. Clouds contain secrets that all of us, young and old alike, try to figure out. Someone might see a cloud shaped like a cat, or a sailing ship, or a train racing across the blue sky. This fable offers one very simple, very beautiful message: That hiding behind the clouds are all the babies of the world waiting to be born. They gaze down on us as they wait for their turn, cheering for the love of their parents and hoping to arrive soon on earth, where they’ll bring lots of noise and good cheer. The Secrets of Clouds is an irresistible story for readers of all ages. Youngsters will learn precious secrets and grownups will learn what to say to their children and remember the children they themselves once were. We’re pleased to be able to look up and gaze at the sky along with you.

Andrea Bajani Torino, April 2018

Matteo Cellini was born in 1978 in Urbino. He lives in Urbania, where teaches middle school Italian. He is the author of: Cate, io (I, Cate; Fazi, 2013), winner of the Campiello Award (Debut Novel); La primavera di Gordon Copperny, Jr. (Gordon Copperny, Jr.’s Spring; Bompiani, 2016).

Valerio Berruti was born in 1977 in Alba, in the Langhe. His works (all featuring kids and with the music by Joan As Police Woman, Paolo Conte, Gianmaria Testa) have been exhibited in Venice, New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Beijing. Among his books, E più non dimandare, with Davide Longo (And ask no further question, Corraini 2007), Come il vento tra i salici, illustrated flipbook of the translation of Beppe Fenoglio of K. Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (Gallucci 2016). His new animated short film, La giostra di Nina (Nina’s carousel, Sky Arte), original music by Ludovico Einaudi, was just released.

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Andrea Tarabbia Madrigale senza suono [Silent Madrigal] February 2019 250 pages Novel Translation rights: The Italian Literary Agency

The purest of music, the most brutal of crimes, and a daunting, ever subtle game of mirrors. A portrait of Gesualdo da Venosa in a grand novel depicting the prince and his solitude. A man alone and tormented. Obliged by the decorum of the times, he committed a brutal murder. A crime that would fire his own uncontainable artistic genius. That man was Prince Gesualdo da Venosa, the celebrated 16th-century composer of madrigals, and the focus of the hypnotic construction in this erudite, gothic, sensual novel. To pose the scandalous underlying question, how could something so evil give life to so much beauty, as expressed in da Venosa’s music? To save his honor, da Venosa killed his unfaithful wife, Maria D’Avalos, whom he had married amid a flurry of gossip and uproar, and her lover. The stuff of history books. But what remains in the wake of the event is the nostalgia-riddled solitude of the prince. Andrea Tarabbia dips his pen into the pool of blood and torment, and lures the reader into his maze. Andrea Tarabbia was born in Saronno, Italy, in 1978. His novels include La calligrafia come arte della guerra (Penmanship as an Art of War) and Il demone a Beslan (The Demon in Beslan), Il giardino delle Mosche (2016; The Garden of Flies), and Il peso del legno (2018; The Weight of Wood). He is author of La buona morte. Viaggio nell’eutanasia in Italia, an examination of euthanasia in Italy. He translated into Italian and edited Michail Bulgakov’s Diavoleide. Silent Madrigal is his first novel published by Bollati Boringhieri. Tarabbia lives in Bologna.

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Francesco Longo Molto mossi gli altri mari [Other Seas Rough] April 2019 160 pages (48.000 words) Novel Translation rights: Pietrosanti agenzia letteraria

Regrets and expectations – there seem to be no other states of mind in the Bay of Santa Virginia, a beach underlying a wild, bleak promontory. When the radio announces a freak storm is about to hit the coast, the kids who have spent all the summers of their lives there come back to ride the epic waves they’ve always longed for. Michele, the only member of the group who was actually born in Santa Virginia – he knows every oak tree and pathway on the promontory by memory – hears the weather alert. But he also receives the news that Micol is about to get married. Micol is the elegant and elusive girl with curly hair he met years ago, swimming among the end-of-summer rollers. He waited for and dreamed of her for years before doing everything he could to forget about her. Micol and Michele were always on the point of saying something to each other, but never did because September always drew them apart. He spends his winters lolling in bed with a temperature, fighting against the oppressiveness of the promontory by repairing bikes with his father, observing the moon through a telescope and imagining alien landings, tied down by the splendour of a place he doesn’t want to leave. Intimidated and reticent, the last of the great romantics, Michele becomes the central figure of the gang of suntanned rich kids who travel to and fro between Rome and their seaside villas. He even becomes a close friend of Guido, the eccentric and charismatic blond leader of the pack, who gives him his first surfboard. Molto mossi gli altri mari draws a perfect map of nostalgia through a love story formed entirely of silences, which develops among automatic garden sprayers and well-trimmed hedges, nurtured by a never-ending sequence of canoe and bike rides and lived out between table tennis courts and Guido’s splendid swimming pool. A love story shaped by incandescent sunsets and the summer rites of a place plagued with melancholy and kissed by the sweetness of nature. The golden summer light spills over the pages of the novel, a marine light that casts the long, menacing shadows of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. It’s Silvia, Michele’s ravishing confidante, restless and dissatisfied, who guides him through the hours in which the Bay is at the centre of a crescendo of weather alerts. It’s she who compels him take his final opportunity and tell Micole everything he has never dared to before. When they realise at last that it’s not only other people’s lives that are tempestuous, that only the past and future are desirable, the kids of the Bay have to come to terms with a tragic finale that wrong-foots them and sends them crashing into adult life.

Francesco Longo (Rome, 1978), a journalist, is a co-author with Christian Raimo, Francesco Pacifico and Nicola Lagioia of the collective novel 2005 dopo Cristo (Einaudi 2005) under the pseudonym Babette Factory. He is also the author of the narrative reportage Il mare di pietra (Laterza, 2009). Molto mossi gli altri mari is his first novel.

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Michele Cecchini Folmedìna Cover illustration by Manuele Fior May 2019 pp. 180 (66.500 words) Novel English translation sample available

Emilio Cacini, known to everyone as ‘Soldo di cacio’ (Shorty) on account of his diminutive stature, teaches art at a secondary school. Fat and clumsy, Cacio has vision problems yet has always cultivated a passion for images. So much so that he often associates them with his experience of reality and the works of his favourite painters. Cacio has a secret involving a woman, Ilaria, with whom he had a relationship during the period in which she was a member of the Red Brigades. He’d like to confide in someone but in Ardenza Mare, the neighbourhood on the outskirts of Livorno where he lives, no one asks too many overly personal questions. The fact is that it’s something of an anomalous place, largely because of the magical, enchanted atmosphere in which it’s immersed. From her cage in the middle of the neighbourhood park, the majestic tigress Mirtilla (Blackcurrant) has always been a reassuring presence for the locals. Cacio has a son called Pitore (Pet Chicken), a child who suffers from a developmental speech disorder. In practice, Pitore speaks a language all of his own made up of new words such as Folmedina. This would appear to be no big deal for Cacio, who goes out of his way to find alternative forms of communication to words in an attempt to forge an increasingly close relationship with the child, who he’s bringing up by himself. Albeit disoriented, Cacio has a whole world inside himself and goes his own way. He is gentle but, at the same time, strong, capable of passing through solitude and creating harmony from the disharmony he feels around him. In search of authentic communication that goes beyond words, Cacio seems to be saying that the world can exist in many different ways, provided we know how to invent it. Michele Cecchini possesses a unique imagination, a virtue few writers can boast of. His is a magical realism marked by a special form of delicacy and wonder. A cross between Fellini and Soriano, he uses a special lens to look at and speak about the world, which flies lightly by, as if it were enclosed in a soap bubble.

Michele Cecchini was born in Lucca on September 28 1972. He teaches literature in a high school in Livorno, where he lives. He has published Dall’aprile a shantih (2010) and Per il bene che ti voglio (2015) with edizioni Erasmo. Folmedina is his first novel for Bollati Boringhieri.

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Ade Zeno L’incanto del pesce luna [The enchantment of the moon fish] September 2019 42.000 words Novel English translation sample available

Gonzalo has an unusual job. Employed as master of ceremonies by the Cremation Society of a large city, he organizes and presides over secular funerals in the chapel of the old Monumental Cemetery. In his twelve years at the Crematorium, he has arranged thousands of funerals with passion and professionalism. He’s married to Gloria, whom he met at University. He has a daughter, the adored Inès, who at eight years old fell into a deep coma caused by a mysterious illness. Confined to a hospital room, Inès’ fate hangs by a thread. The dialogue between father and daughter is a silent one, made by nearness and by the music he listens to beside her. This includes the tap dancing of Gene Kelly, the only thing that can induce in Inès’ eyelids something resembling a sign of life. The parents’ increasingly ephemeral hope of finding a cure that might awaken her is rekindled unexpectedly one day by Malaguti, a shady and fascinating character who suggests that Gonzalo work for him—or rather, for his elderly employer. In exchange for a great deal of money and the promise of admitting Inés into an exclusive clinic, Gonzalo must abandon his former occupation and pass into the employ of Mistress Marisòl. The head of a very powerful family, she lives in a large villa on a hill and never leaves her bedroom. Her appearance is that of a decrepit granny, but once a week her monstrous nature requires her to devour human flesh. Now too weak to seek out food on her own, she needs an assistant to find and lead sacrificial victims to her. The enterprise is not simple, the obstacles are many, and Gonzalo will have to wrestle not only with the desire to save his daughter, but with the need to redeem himself. It will be the ancient Marisòl herself who opens his eyes, planting the doubt that, when all is said and done, he too is a monster like her, like many others. And, like everyone else, deluded in thinking that the seeds of monstrosity always dwell elsewhere. The Enchantment of the Moon Fish is a novel with a visionary force all its own. It is ferociously cynical, yet full of delicacy and emotion at the same time. Among the best Italian novelists of his generation, Ade Zeno has written a book that is at once reckless and melancholic, hovering on the border between what we know and what we fear, between the dead who are still living and the living who have temporarily ceased to be so, between the monsters who come out in the open, and those who feign normality.

Ade Zeno was born in Turin in 1979. He made his debut in 2009 with the novel Topics for Hell (Argomenti per l’inferno), a finalist for the Premio Tondelli, which was followed by The Angel Exposed (L’angelo esposto) in 2015. In 2010, together with the Sparajurij collective, he founded the international literary magazine Atti impuri. For years he has worked as master of ceremonies at the Turin Crematorium.

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Eliana Bouchard La boutique [The boutique] April 2018 304 pages (85.000 words) Novel English translation sample available

At the core of this new novel is a boutique, a spacious place full of light where objects and clothes are given new life; the layout and architecture of the space feature both Eastern and Western details. The two owners have very different personalities: Nina, whose husband committed suicide in the aftermath of the US financial crash, is vulnerable and unsettled; Teresa, Jewish and married to a Spanish cello player that gives her confidence and comfort, is balanced and determined. The boutique sees an entire world of people coming and going through its doors, and the relationships that start there soon complicate themselves, showing the signs of a transient and ever changing universe. The boutique also becomes a meeting point for the cast of characters that regularly spends time there – a career woman, a strong-minded housewife, an ex workman, a frustrated father and a cheating gay man –, a place where they can play out affections, jealousy, betrayals, hopes and disappointments. When Ibrahim, an Afghan tailor, attempts to declare his love for high-maintenance Nina, even the most ill matched couple will show a determination to change, a flicker of hope for a better world.

Her historical novel Louise. Canzone senza pause was shortlisted at the Campiello award in 2008.

«A light and sophisticated style, devoid of stereotypes and clichés.» Silvana Mazzocchi, La Repubblica - Robinson

«Eliana Bouchard’s prose is gracious and charming; she does not even try to copy the spoken language, she makes a point of creating a distance from it. (…) In the last page, we find one of the most beautiful love statements of the most recent Italian fiction.» Filippo La Porta, Il Sole 24 ore

«A fascinating and tense novel from beginning to end.» Antonia Arslan, Famiglia Cristiana

«Bouchard’s pages, with their linguistic clarity and measured style, are the result of observing humanity’s many facets, an unrelenting and complex act, even more so when it abstains from the obtrusiveness of judgment.» Massimo Raffaeli, Il Venerdì (La Repubblica)

«Eliana Bouchard has the patience of a jaguar, of someone that can spot a face on a fingernail. The author of Louise, a beautiful and bewildering historical novel, she is a quiet and “chamber” writer. One thing is certain: Bouchard is better than an Elena Ferrante whatsoever.» Davide Brullo, il Giornale

«The boutique is a microcosm, a place where our society's uncertainties and all the matters that shake today’s world cross paths.» Anna Maria Merlo, il manifesto 9 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

Louise. Canzone senza pause [Louise. A song without rest] 2007 – 250 pages

France, 1577: Louise, the daughter of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, is among the few survivors of St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which her father, her husband and many of her closest friends are killed. After that day her life is a constant struggle not to lose her identity, an attempt to live up to the great responsibility of the people who, like her, survived while many others died. In her tireless search for the common good, even through the continued misfortunes of her life, Louise embodies the female roots of modern Europe.

Rights to Louise sold to – Russian: AST Release Holdings

Praise for Louise. Canzone senza pause

«It has been a long time since we have seen a debut so well developed and clear, highly original in its linguistic and stylistic choices; it has also been a while from the last time we read an Italian novel that keeps its promise in delivering “historical” features». Massimo Raffaeli, Il manifesto

«Like Maria Bellonci, the writer gives voice to the grand lady of the XVI century with whom – centuries apart – she establishes a “deep connection”; she makes us want to scroll through those letters to see if the princess d’Orange’s sensitivity and choice of words were really so similar to those of a contemporary author». Alessandro Barbero, La Stampa

«The beauty lies in the balance of the different features, be it Louise’s inner thoughts or the outside world. Moreover, the writing is literary yet light, depicting relationships with a soft touch, war techniques with precision and religious themes with intensity. We lose ourselves in a journal of times past, almost forgetting it is in fact contemporary prose». Ermanno Paccagnini, Il Corriere della Sera

«An excellent historical novel, surprising for its original stylistic choices». Giovanni Pacchiano, Il Sole 24 Ore

«An evocative, determined woman figure that the author, through her passionate writing, has caused to rise – radiant – from the shadows». Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti, Il Corriere della Sera

«It is through her writing that Eliana Bouchard takes care of a character so crucial to find in the dunghill of wars the many-coloured flowers of a different spirit». Filippo La Porta, Il Messaggero

«It is a beautiful biography, perfect in its historical references but also very well written, with true passion, effortlessly absorbing the reader in the vicissitudes of this noble woman who happened to be both a persecuted and an important element in the European politics of her time». Lucetta Scaraffia, Il Foglio

Eliana Bouchard was born in Rorà, in the Waldenses Valleys close to the French border. She lives and works in Rome. She sings in a baroque music choir. Her previous titles published by Bollati Boringhieri are: Louise. Canzone senza pause (2007) and La mia unica amica (2013).

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Achille Mauri Il paradosso di Achille [Achilles’ Paradox] January 2019 Novel 250 pages

Only those well-versed in life’s good cheer can cross the most important threshold and step out amused and ever curious to discover the unknown. In Anime e acciughe (Souls and Anchovies, his debut), Achille Mauri took us by the hand and led us to the great beyond – where only writers have access to, where Dante and Orpheus dared tread, intrepid, in search of love. In Achilles’ Paradox, Mauri informs us that that little excursion was but an appetizer, and that there’s no hurry to get out alive. After all, eternity is congenial to drawn-out spates of enjoyment. You left your watch at home, so to speak, or on the other side of life. Reap the rewards. An irresistible sequel to Anime e acciughe, Achilles’ Paradox is first and foremost a story in itself. Achilles has become a celebrity among the dead. There’s a cloud of anchovies that follows him around. No happier, or bizarre, “train” was ever seen in the great beyond. Being a celebrity, he is invited to make the rounds on the convention circuit of the great beyond. He discusses love with Shakespeare and Wanda Osiris. He is distraught over immigration, along with Plato, Aeschylus and, among others, Zygmunt Bauman. Reflections on solitude, and moving yet amusing thoughts on aging. Achilles’ Paradox is an exuberant, profound novel. It explores the paradox that makes us human. The one that, in the end, makes us love death because it makes life that much more important, and inspires us to live every day of our lives with gusto.

Praise for Anime e acciughe

«Let all honor be done to an author who wrote three hundred pages on the afterlife without ever mentioning death». Corriere della Sera – Sette

«A brilliant autobiography with a dramatic rhythm». Corriere della Sera

W/Spanish rights licensed to Adriana Hidalgo.

As always, Achille Mauri dialogues with intellectuals, artists, shamans, sports champions, Argentinian gauchos, immigrants, designers. He is a tireless voyager through space – Milano, Paris, New York, Dahomey, South America; and time – years that changed the world, from 1968 to boat people. He delves into an endless array of knowledge, from animism to animalism and spiritism, with sustained lightness and humanity that set this novel and its version of the great beyond apart. He heads the Italian publisher and distributor Messaggerie Italiane, the Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri School for Booksellers, and the Fabio Mauri Association for the 11 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

Arts World Experiment. Bollati Boringhieri published his literary debut Anime e acciughe. Achilles’ Paradox is his second novel.

Anime e acciughe [Souls and Anchovies] 2017 – 304 pages (87.000 words) Full French translation available

W/Spanish rights licensed to Adriana Hidalgo.

What kind of story is this? What’s the link between souls and anchovies, and a whole school of them?! Welcome in afterlife, where souls and anchovies live peacefully together. Be ready to be surprised, though: afterlife might not be just as you expect: everything is light. And it’s called “life now”. Via Cusani, Milan: Achille has just woken up in his place in Milan, and he’s talking to an illustrious deceased, field marshal Radetzky, who lived in that house – of all places! – in the good (for him) old times of the Austrian occupation. The diverse souls who happen to be nearby – but also elsewhere, far or near – join the conversation too and we find ourselves in an afterworld that is very close to our world. So close, that Radetzky, from his vantage point, has renamed it “life now”. Achille’s soul has moved to a garage in Piazza San Marco, to his son’s friends’ Porsche, where even his cat Ely has long decided to settle. From that moment, encounters, stories, conversations become more and more frequent and, of course, surreal… The stories we find are not only those of Umberto Eco, Andy Warhol, Karl Marx, Woody Allen, Elio Fiorucci or Marshal Radetzky: they are also stories of other souls, normal souls, who only go by their name: Marco, or Lucrezia. Don’t be afraid: the conversations are always ironical, comical at times, even exhilarating. We travel “through” the souls from Dahomey (former name of present Benin) to the Frankfurt Book Fair, from the Sahara Desert to wedding parties in Buenos Aires. We laugh, hoping that “life now” will be just like that, just as fun, just as varied, with its mysteries so clear. “Life now” is also full of animals flying around, all with a soul. And, of course, it’s full of anchovies, swimming in enormous schools and literally transporting other souls, human souls.

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Hans Tuzzi La vita uccide in prosa [Life Kills in Prose] October 2018 152 pages (37.500 words) Novel Translation rights: Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency

«Currently the best author of quality thrillers.» Corrado Augias, il Venerdì di Repubblica A new novel featuring Inspector Norberto Melis. September 1988. A gray-haired clerk from the Land Registry Office is gunned down in the front yard of his home near Lambro Park (Milan). A robbery attempt gone awry? An accident? The act of a drug-crazed lunatic? Or revenge? There’s nothing in the victim’s work record to support the latter motive, which appears, however, the most likely. Perhaps the aged clerk wasn’t such a stickler for the same old daily routine after all. We soon learn that his old, disabled father... Could it be that the key to solving this crime lies among the nooks and crannies of life in a family that only on the surface passes off for normal, somewhere in the day-in, day-out routine that otherwise might be thought of as entirely mundane? Besides being highly regarded author of essays in book history, rare book dealing, and of the novel Vanagloria (2012), Hans Tuzzi is the acclaimed author of crime novels set in Milan, starring inspector Melis: Il Maestro della Testa sfondata [The Crushed Head Master] (2002), Perché Yellow non correrà [Why Yellow won’t run] (2003), Il principe dei gigli [The Prince of lilies] (2005 and 2012), Casta Diva (2005 and 2013), Fuorché l’onore [All but honour] (2005 and 2017), La morte segue I Magi [Death follows the Magi] (2009 and 2017), L’ora incerta tra cane e lupo [The uncertain hour between the dog and the wolf] (2010), Un posto sbagliato per morire [A wrong place to die] (2011), Un enigma del passato [A riddle from the past] (2013 and 2017), La figlia più bella [The fairest daughter] (2015), La belva nel labirinto [The beast in the labyrinth] (2017). Al vento dell’Oceano [Ocean Wind Novel] (2017), the last volume of the Neron Vukcic trilogy, following Il trio dell’arciduca [The Archduke’s Trio] (2014) and Il sesto Faraone [The sixth Pharaoh] (2016).

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NON FICTION LIST

Donatella Di Cesare Sulla vocazione politica della filosofia [On the political vocation of philosophy] October 2018 170 pages (37.500 words) English translation sample available

«Vocation» is a charged word, especially in times like our own, where multifaceted strategies of unburdening and exemption prevail. But Donatella di Cesare has always operated against both blatant and disguised conformism, be it Heidegger’s metaphysical anti-Semitism, the connection between torture and democracy, or the philosophy of migration. In this new book she engages in a political and existential reflection on the role of philosophy in the era of liberal governance.

If philosophy discovered its political vocation when Socrates first addressed the polis – although from an eccentric position and a disconcerting one for power –, in present times its political power is no less than astounding. The world today is sucked into a «saturated immanence» that seems to preclude all exits, to be immune to non-condescending cognitive regimes, and to slide in a perpetual virtuality that resembles a state of exhausted numbness. Because to think makes us strangers, displaces us and puts us against our time. It urges us to renounce all pretence of sovereignty, forces us to be alert. So philosophy today can be qualified through three Greek words, all starting with a privative prefix: atopy, uchronia, anarchy. And in today’s polis – locked up in a phobia of the outside – philosophy has to assume the responsibility to preserve existence (the existere that has the word outside in its very etymology) and bring justice to the living.

Rights for Resident strangers licensed: World English: Polity Press; World Spanish: Amorrortu; Portuguese: Âyné; Danish: Vandkusten.

Praise for Resident strangers

«For the first time, Stranieri Residenti forces us to rethink the migration phenomenon, not only in the emergency context of today, but also on a more profound level.» Roberto Esposito, L’Espresso

«As Donatella Di Cesare’s beautiful book demonstrates, the migration phenomenon does not exclusively concern the political, sociological or journalistic spheres, but calls strongly for philosophical reflection.» Bruno Moroncini, Il Sole 24 Ore

«An essential book on contemporary culture. Reading it helps us understand.» Furio Colombo, il Fatto Quotidiano 14 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

«Di Cesare outlines a ‘monumental clash’, rendered more extreme by the ‘planetary exile’ condition brought by globalization. In her view, to reside and to migrate are not opposite concepts; the distinction between citizen and foreigner resident fades away.» La Stampa

«Donatella Di Cesare writes an important book, powerful in its deconstruction of sovereignty; it unfolds engagingly as a genealogical reflection, a story and an essay. A taste of contemporary philosophy’s style developed around current events.» Il manifesto

Stranieri residenti. Per una politica dell’abitare [Resident strangers. Policies for inhabiting the world] October 2017 274 pages (96.000 words) English translation sample available

The over 60 million refugees in the world are not an “emergency”. In fact, they represent a phenomenon shedding light on the meaning of the verb “to inhabit”. In a philosophical-political essay written in a clear and effective style, which debunks the stereotype of autochthony, Donatella Di Cesare distances herself from the myth of Mother Nature and of jus soli: exile – and not rootedness – is for Di Cesare the hallmark of our existence. We are all “resident strangers”. We inhabit the earth but we do not have the right to claim property. We are all exiles, as in languages, where there are no proprietors, but only guests. With the end of modernity, global diaspora has unveiled a double deceit: the pretense of being autochthones, rooted in our native soil, entrenched in the assurance of our identity, on the one side, and the apparent alternative to this narrative, that is, the disenchanted embracing of technological motility, of continuous wandering on the other. In her reflection on inhabiting, Donatella Di Cesare proposes a third-way, which is both ethical and political: the “resident stranger”. “Resident strangers”, who break the atavistic bond with the place where they reside, with no feeling of nostalgia for lost motherlands, move beyond the mere demand of reception. Thus, conditions that are considered as dangerous by many – unwanted proximity, unwanted cohabitations – are actually the only ones allowing for cohabitation in a globalized world, where we are all received and called to receive.

Rights for Torture licensed: World English: Polity Press; World Spanish: Gedisa; Danish: Vandkusten; Serbian: Dereta

Rights for Heidegger and the Jews licensed: World English: Polity Press; German: Klostermann; French: Seuil; World Spanish: Gedisa; Danish: Vandkunsten

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Tortura [Torture] Series: Sampietrini 2016 – 218 pages (55.000 words) English translation sample available

The condemnation is no longer unanimous. After 9/11 attacks, the new apologists of torture have found in the “war on terror” ground to justify a practice that has never been abandoned. In the last years, it even seems to spread everywhere, both in democracies and in totalitarian regimes. Yet the “no” arising from indignation is no longer enough to defend the human dignity offended by torture. With her clear and incisive style, Di Cesare reconstructs the current “debate” in the USA and offers a critical overall framework of torture in the 21st century. Her intense narration shows the close connection between torture and power; it reveals the dissemination of torture inside the democracy. Di Cesare interprets torture as an archaic and unsettling ritual that inserts the life into the state order. Any citizen may be tortured – not only the terrorist. How can we fight torture, if the culprit is the State itself? Who must account for government-sponsored torture? Di Cesare does not only denounce the collapse of human rights; she also stresses the illegitimacy of the State that violates the human body or allows its violation. Di Cesare draws from the thought of philosophers, writers, dramatists, film directors and poets to sketch a completely new «phenomenology of torture». The aim is to detect the peculiarity of an extreme violence – systematic and methodic – where the pain is calculated and measured in such a way that the victim does not die and the torturer can continue to exercise his sovereignty. For the victim, torture is death experienced in life. To survive does not mean to be able to erase that intimate and total violation. For Di Cesare, torture has become an administrative practice in the new century. Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, the G8 in Genoa, the Italian “Years of Lead”, the tragic case of the Cambridge student Giulio Regeni and all the other cases that have recently created social alarm: torture has always been used as a tool for governing. The way it is done is so sophisticated that it is increasingly difficult to detect the use of torture. It threatens whenever police may abuse of the monopoly of force, whenever it hangs over any internment structure where a helpless person is «in the hands of a stronger one»: in maximum-security prisons, penal institutions, psychiatric departments, refugee camps, hospitals, hospices, centres for disability, institutes for the underage. Organized impunity, amnesty, amnesia, and silence: all of them are at the service of torture. The absence of crime favours it.

Praise for Torture

Times Higher Education Book of Week (20th September 2018)

“Without hiding anything on torture, Donatella Di Cesare offers us an epic out of a grain of grief that has long been shut up in secret cellars. Her book is worthy of respect, for its philosophical, juridical, historical, and ethical quality. And it is also a compelling reading.” Luigi Zoja, il Venerdì-La Repubblica

“Should we peep into this black hole from a philosophical point of view, as Donatella Di Cesare does? Definitely. For at stake is much more than a purely academic exercise on an abstract issue.” Emanuele Trevi, Corriere della Sera

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“A text that is radical in its political structure. Facing the abyss of the unspeakable.” Wlodek Goldkorn, l’Espresso

“A rigorous survey, full of historical data and instructive on the present of torture.” Furio Colombo, il Fatto Quotidiano

Praise for Heidegger and the Jews. The “Black Notebook”

«Heidegger and the Jews is the book that had never been written on the relationship between the great twentieth-century philosopher and anti-Semitism. The book by Donatella Di Cesare is today the real editorial novelty in the discussion around Martin Heidegger and Nazism. Through the pages of Heidegger and the Jews, the so far undisclosed Black Notebooks, now partially published, shed new light and provide the outline of a real document of a time when a decisive part of the culture of the last century is summarized.» Gianni Vattimo

«Pour Donatella di Cesare, Heidegger aurait donc bien livré son interprétation de la Shoah : il s’agirait d’une auto-annihilation des Juifs par les Juifs. Comment ne pas penser en effet aux ordres donnés par Reinhard Heydrich, quelques semaines après le début de la guerre, de créer des « conseils juifs » (Judenräte) afin de laisser aux « Juifs » le soin d’organiser leur propre déportation ?» Le Monde

«Di Cesare wrote that the Shoah for Heidegger is “presented as playing a decisive role” in a main tenant of Heidegger’s philosophy of the history of being». The Jerusalem Post

Donatella Di Cesare is a professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Università La Sapienza in Rome and of Philosophical Hermeneutics at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. She is one of the most active voices in the contemporary public debate. Among her latest books are: Grammatica dei tempi messianici [Grammar in messianic times] (2011), La giustizia deve essere di questo mondo [Justice has to be part of this world] (2012), Se Auschwitz è nulla. Contro il negazionismo [If Auschwitz is nothing. Against denial theories] (2012), Crimini contro l’ospitalità [Crimes against hospitality] (2014) and Terrore e modernità [Terror and modernity] (2017). With Bollati Boringhieri she published Israele. Terra, ritorno, anarchia [Israel. Land, returning and Anarchy] (2014), Heidegger e gli ebrei. I «quaderni neri» [Heidegger and the Jews. The «black books»] (2014), new and extended edition (2016), Heidegger & Sons. Eredità e futuro di un filosofo [Heidegger & Sons. Legacy and future of a philosopher] (2015), Tortura [Torture] (2016) and Stranieri residenti. Una filosofia della migrazione. [Resident Strangers. Philosophy of migration] (2017).

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Davide Sisto La morte si fa social. Immortalità, memoria e lutto nell’epoca della cultura digitale [Death goes social. Immortality, memory and mourning in the digital age] 149 pages (47.000 words) September 2018 English translation sample available

Facebook is the biggest cemetery in the world. How many of your friends on the social network are not around anymore? How did the perception of death change with the arrival of the digital world?

For a long time now, at least since modernity abruptly entered our lives, death has been forcefully pushed aside into an invisible corner. Our society hides death from sight, relegates it to the private sphere, in the privacy of darkened rooms, impossible to see from the outside. Death must not be exposed, almost as if it was a human weakness to hide and not an ineluctable fact for everyone. As if it was something to be ashamed of. This invisible death is particularly prominent in the western world, where the subject is almost taboo, where the mourning process has been «medicalized» and labelled as a psychotic syndrome, where ultimately the awareness of our finiteness is not considered a necessary value for personal growth and self-improvement that enables a more human social bond; which is how it should be. Death, that for the ancient Greek culture was considered part of life, is not welcome in our conversations. Recently, however, the digital revolution has had an unexpected effect on this. Not only it has revolutionised the way we communicate, radically changed our social structure and modified the relationship between man and work in ways that are still not clear: all of a sudden the impalpable digital sphere has also made death visible – and somehow acceptable. The first virtual cemetery (World Wide Cemetery) is from 1995, and its creator envisioned it as a place where the memory of the departed could live forever. Since then, however, the Internet has seen a vast array of solutions becoming available (mostly at a cost), all aiming to maintain the memory of your loved ones (or your own) in the most technologically advanced ways; even with the aide of artificial intelligence, that is now able to analyse our personalities with increasing accuracy and therefore –for example – to send messages accurately similar to those that the departed would have written, years after his or her passing. An email from the afterlife is hard to forget. Does all this sound a bit creepy? Sure, but behind this technology – Thanatechnology – there is clearly a forward thinking strategy, a new relationship between our society and death brought in by technological advancement. Davide Sisto researched the subject for years. His book focuses on this field – which is completely new – and has never been handled from a philosophical perspective. If the purpose of philosophy is to interpret the present – especially in times when values are shifting –, Sisto’s book is a great example of this, a starting point for thinking about the changes in the relationship between human thought and death in the digital age, the approaching of a Digital Age Education, and confronting that part of us that will remain when we will no longer be around.

«A brilliant essay, packed with insights and information on how the web compels us to rethink our relationship with the end that awaits us all.» Tommaso Pincio, Il Venerdì di Repubblica 18 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

«Can the web help supersede a cultural model that envisages the repression of death from the social world? If so, at what price and with what risks? Drawing with equal scrupulousness on Derrida and Black Mirror, on Walter Benjamin and Simon Reynolds, Sisto challenges the bottleneck of dystopia and seeks the answers to these questions without prejudice […] A meticulous, non-dogmatic read.» Robinson, La Repubblica

«In recent times, the so-called fourth revolution – the technological revolution that thinks it can make us live forever with the use of machines – has ended up returning death into public discourse. Here Sisto, a research fellow at the University of Turin and lecturer on the Death Studies & the End of Life specialisation course in Padua, makes a rigorous scientific analysis of how technology is bringing death back into our lives.» La Lettura, Corriere della Sera

«Technological innovations, smidgeons of anthropology, jurisprudence, philosophy – written in highly enjoyable prose, Davide Sisto’s essay triggers many uncomfortable but necessary questions. At the centre of the book, ethics and the acceptance of human narrow-mindedness.» Critica Letteraria

«A book that is, at once, engaging and profound.» Federico Vercellone, La Stampa

«Philosopher Davide Sisto has produced a vademecum for anyone keen to approach Death Studies and the way they have been revolutionised by new technologies with a critical eye. Eschewing all snobbery, Sisto puts everything from highbrow philosophy to that of TV serials on the same plane.» Il Tascabile

«Digital technologies are transforming our relationship with memory and grief. In the words of the philosopher Davide Sisto, we are trying to find the “natural” role of death.» Mind

«It’s something of a leap from the romanticism of Friedrich von Schelling to the commemorative profiles on social networks. Davide Sisto, a Turin-born philosopher specialising in thanatology, managed it about four years ago.» La Repubblica

Davide Sisto is a philosopher and a post-doc researcher in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Torino. He is an expert in Thanatechnology, which is the study of death from a philosophical perspective and in relation to medicine, digital culture and the posthuman. He teaches «Death Studies & the End of life», a master’s degree at the University of Padova and at the Collegio di Milano; he also collaborates with Infine Onlus of Torino, where he is member of the scientific committee and co-head of the blog «Si può dire morte» (We may talk about death). Sisto has also researched Romantic Philosophy, with particular focus on Schelling. In addition to numerous essays on national and international journals, he published Lo specchio e il talismano. Schelling e la malinconia della natura [The mirror and the talisman. Shelling and the melancholy of nature] (2009), Narrare la morte. Dal romanticismo al post-umano [Narrating Death. From Romanticism to posthuman] (2013) and Schelling. Tra natura e malinconia [Schelling. Between nature and melancholy] (2016).

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Andrea Cavalletti Vertigine. Il pensiero e l’attrazione oscura dell’identità [Vertigo. Thought and the dark attraction to identity] February 2019 230 pages (71.000 words) English translation sample available

World Spanish translation rights licensed to Adriana Hidalgo

«Andrea Cavalletti is one of the most innovative Italian philosophers. Under his watch everything appears in a new light». Giorgio Agamben

An unprecedented investigation of the pre-Freudian psychiatric literature – an infinite source of surprises – and an exemplary study of the reasons that urged all the major philosophers of the 19th and 20th century to think of vertigo as intrinsically part of philosophy itself: Andrea Cavalletti reads these narrations through the lens of Hithcock’s Vertigo.

Fear of emptiness, fear of heights: everyone knows what acrophobia is, and a lot of people are affected by it. Before Freud, the so-called «science of the soul» regarded it as the queen of mental illnesses; it destabilizes and poisons consciousness, making it override the ego with an illusory congestion. This acknowledgment was already anticipated by the big thinkers of the past, who not surprisingly commented on the uselessness of the rational mind to cope with the anxiety induced by the abyss. Montaigne stated that if a philosopher was going to be hanging mid-air in a cage on top of the Notre-Dame towers, he «will see, by manifest reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find (unless he has been used to the plumber’s trade) that he cannot help but the sight of the excessive height will fright and astound him». Pascal agreed: «put the greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be; if there is a precipice below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail». It is only in the last two centuries that philosophy has come to the conclusion that vertigo is not simply an effect of an occasional unbalance to overcome, but something with its own existence. Our identity appears uncertain, kinetic, opaque, vertiginous. The consciousness paradigm and its alleged stability has been analysed through whole theoretical traditions, from Kierkegaard to Husserl, from Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty, from Lévinas to Jankélévitch. With a very effective and enlightening move, Cavalletti juxtaposes the philosophical themes of the eccentric dislocation of the ego, the «abyssal» inversion between the close and the far, typical of intentionality, to Hitchcock’s cinematographic rendition of falling into the void. The director fretted on that scene for fifteen year, eventually shooting it with an ingenious movement and counter-movement of dolly and zoom, now a standard in cinema technique. That «push and hold back» that triggers the vertigo effect is the habitual condition of subject and intersubjectivity: in order to reach myself I have to see myself from down there, with other people’s eyes. «Then, my here flees over there and pulls me in». 20 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

Rights to Classe licensed to: Spanish: Adriana Hidalgo; Portuguese: Antigona; French: Climats/Flammarion

Rights to Suggestione licensed to: French: Climats/Flammarion; World Spanish: Adriana Hidalgo

Praise for Suggestione [Suggestion]

«Magic, charlatanry, the use of suggestion made by dictators, the beginning of a psychology of crowds, growing critical awareness in the intellectuals are the themes on which the author gathers a myriad of precious observations and references to books neglected by the critics». Gianni Vattimo, L’Espresso

«His diagnosis on the messianic charm – rather than magic – making crowds grow cemented inside an illusory identitarian conformism draws our attention on a disturbing junction». La Lettura – Corriere della Sera

Andrea Cavalletti teaches moral Philosophy at the University of Bologna. He writes for alias, the Manifesto’s Sunday magazine. Among his essays: La città biopolitica. Mitologie della sicurezza (2005). With Bollati he published Classe (2009, translated in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese) and Suggestione. Potenza e limiti del fascino politico (2011, translated in Spanish and English); he has edited some of Furio Jesi’s work (Spartakus. Simbologia della rivolta, 2000, Kierkegaard, 2001 and Bachofen,2005) and Chaim Nachman Bialik’s essay Halachah e Aggadah. Sulla legge ebraica (2006).

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Giorgio Agamben Stasis. La Guerra civile come paradigma politico. Homo sacer, II, 2 New extended edition November 2018 115 pages

An essay that has brought back to the public’s attention a concept always considered unacceptable by modern political philosophy: civil war, that ancient Greeks called stasis and considered it a fundamental aspect of life in the polis.

The new edition includes an extra chapter on war, game, and the enemy. Three essential concepts to define politics.

War and game are antithetical paradigms that immediately evoke their respective theorists, Carl Schmitt and Johan Huizinga, and in the 20th century they become criteria for political access. For Schmitt, danger is embedded in man, exposing him to the threat of violent death: in a peaceful world there would be no distinction between friends and enemies. As politics rely on this distinction, it would cease to exist. To the opposite side of the tragic paradigm is the playful one described by Huizinga, that places within the realm of play all wars that are not «proper wars»: like the the agonistic wars, primary forms of ritualized or initiation fighting that, throughout the years, evolved into a bloody affair. Originally, fights that did not have the annihilation of the adversary as their goal were actually a way to forge relationships (Plato mentions this in The Republic when he writes that the Greeks fight among themselves with the intention to reconcile). This «serious game», notes Giorgio Agamben, has then been seized by the State, which deploys the agonistic function in different ways: which is when the enemy takes on non –human characteristics in order to be killed.

Giorgio Agamben has taught at several universities: Macerata, Verona and later Venice IUAV, from which he resigned in 2009. He has been visiting professor at several European and American universities. Among his publications Il mistero del male. Benedetto XVI e la fine dei tempi (2013) [Evil’s mistery. Benedict XVI and the end of time], The Highest Poverty. Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life ([2011] Stanford University Press 2013), and Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life ([1995] Stanford University Press 1998). With Bollati Boringhieri he has published Karman (2017), Stasis. La guerra civile come paradigm (2015) [Stasis. Civil war as paradigm], Opus Dei. An archaeology of duty ([2012] Stanford University Press 2013), Il Regno e la Gloria. Per una genealogia teologica dell’economia e del governo (2009) [The reign and the glory. For a theological genealogy of economy and government], Signatura rerum. Sul metodo (2008) [Signatura rerum. On method], Nymphs ([2007] Seagull Books 2013), State of exception ([2003] Chicago University Press 2005), The Open. Man and Animal ([2002] Stanford University Press 2003), The Coming Community ([2001] University of Minnesota Press), The time that remains. A commentary on the Letter to the Romans ([2000] Stanford University Press 2006), Remnants of Auschwitz. The Witness and the Archive ([1998] MIT Press 2002) and Means without Ends. Notes on Politics ([1996] University of Minnesota Press 2000).

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Felice Cimatti Cose. Per una filosofia del reale [Things. A philosophy for reality] September 2018 197 pages (63.000 words) English translation sample available

Metaphysics – Being – Threshold – Full – World Five sections of a book that investigates “things” as they are.

«Strictly speaking, this book could have not been written, because it gives a voice to non living things. Things, however, are things precisely because they do not speak, because they do not have the need to express themselves […]. Things are silent in a radical sense, […] silent as a rock, a leaf, a cloud, a pen on a table. Things do not speak because language has no use for them. This book gives word to things, and therefore cannot exist». Despite this introduction, Felice Cimatti wrote the book at the end – with words, of course – tapping into the century-old debate of the «thing in itself», the Kantian Ding an sich, the object that «is» irrespective of human thought that verbalizes it, interprets it, gives it sense; all things that the «thing» does not contemplate. This ontology would require human beings to become things, to dehumanize themselves, which is Cimatti’s philosophical effort in this book: to speak about things and how they relate to each other, drawing from the vast amount of philosophical literature produced in centuries of human inquiries, but also from enlightening literary excerpts. And all this with a language that is far from academic, because to be a philosopher you do not need to sound vague and esoteric, but to be committed to thinking.

«The basic problem, which [Cimatti) reappraises with rare evocative force in the upper echelons of 20th- century culture, is that of the ineliminable mediation of language – and of its inevitably divalent theoretical foundations. On the one hand is everything that prevents us from encountering things directly, on the other the only path towards them. The lens through which we view things is linguistic in nature. With the naked eye alone we would be unable to pick them up. Which does not mean that language creates them. No one believes that the pole we crash into is only a name. The name of a thing isn’t its reality. But without the name we wouldn’t be able to recognise the thing. So? Does this means that the relationship between us and things is at a standstill? That they are beyond our scope? Cimatti’s answer is that we can approach them only by renouncing the dream of identifying with them and giving them the voice they don’t have.» Roberto Esposito, Robinson, La Repubblica

Felice Cimatti teaches Philosophy of Communication, Semiotic and Argumentation Theory, Theory of Mind and Contemporary Italian Philosophy at the University of Calabria. He is co- director of the «Rivista italiana di filosofia del linguaggio» [Philosophy of Language Italian Review], and is known to the public for being one of the hosts in the radio program Fahrenheit on Rai Radio 3. Among his most recent publications: Naturalmente comunisti. Politica, linguaggio ed economia [Natural communist. Politics, language and economy] (2011), Filosofia dell’animalità [Philosophy of animality] (2013), A come animale. Voci per un bestiario dei sentimenti [A for Animal. Headings for a bestiary of feelings] (2015), Il taglio. Linguaggio e pulsione di morte [The cut. Language and death drive] (2015). For Bollati Boringhieri he published La scimmia che parla. Linguaggio, autocoscienza e libertà nell’animale umano [The talking monkey. Language, self-awareness and freedom of the human animal] (2000) and Il senso della mente. Per una critica del cognitivismo [The sense of the mind. A critique on cognitivism (2004). 23 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

Stefano Quintarelli Capitalismo immateriale. Le tecnologie digitali e il nuovo conflitto sociale [Immaterial capitalism. Digital technologies and the new social conflict] February 2019 240 pages

«The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed». William Gibson

A lot of us live in a world that does not exist anymore, therefore operates with political strategies and mental frames that suited the old world, but are tragically inadequate to the new one. The old world was based on material capitalism, which built and exchanged things. Today, and even more in the immediate future, capitalism has changed face in a radical manner, and it is the exchange of information that rules and prevails. This causes unprecedented conflicts that need to be dealt with new tools. In classic economy, to produce, reproduce and archive was very expensive, and the price of the product was included in these costs. In the intangible economy the only cost is the cost of production. Work hours are an unimportant variable, and the whole world becomes available «here, now». In economic terms the returns of material economy were decreasing (it becomes harder and harder to exploit resources); in the intangible economy they are often increasing (once a model is established, it grows by itself and it becomes exploitable). All this requires a proper revolution in the management of future politics, something we are not prepared for. The traditional conflict between work and capital has been overweighed by the conflict with information. Controlling the intermediation of social and economical relations, it presses both and creates a new class conflict between intermediaries and intermediated. This book gives us the basic tools to understand the scale of this Digital Revolution, using clear examples and with well analyzed dynamics.

Stefano Quintarelli (1965) is an entrepreneur, expert in communication and computer science and an Internet pioneer. He became a congressman in 2013, and for few years he devoted himself to politics, contributing to the modernization of the country, specifically through the creation of SPID (an access system to Public Administartion Services) and the formulation of a legislative proposal that introduced free access Wi-Fi to Italy. He is a member of the Leadership Council of Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the U.N. and part of the Group of high-level experts on Artificial Intelligence for the European Commission. He is also President of the Steering Committee for the Agency of digital Italy.

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Umberto Curi Filosofia del Don Giovanni. Alle origini di un mito moderno [The Philosophy of Don Giovanni. The origins of a modern myth] June 2018 239 pages (80.000 words) English translation sample available

The philosopher Umberto Curi, expert in ancient myths, here analyses the critical myth of modernity. Just like the women seduced in Spain by the serial lover, according to Mozart’s famous aria, Don Giovanni’s interpretations son già mille e tre - are more than a thousand. All of them however are trapped in the stereotype of the women collector and the seduction/damnation paradigm. But Don Giovanni’s story represents a lot more than unrestrained sexuality. The symbol of overbearing and insatiable eros, so charged with this significance to be used as a descriptive noun («a dongiovanni»), comes out entirely redefined by Umberto Curis’s work. In the three classic versions of the Don Giovanni myth, developed by Tirso de Molina, Molière and Mozart – lies an enigma that comes to light in the many revisits of the last two centuries: those of Byron, Puškin, Zorrilla, Kierkegaard, Shaw, Frisch, Gide, Brecht, Brancati, Horváth and others – clearly reshaping the essence of the character: from «punished degenerate» to «strong spirit» that dares question the sanctity of death. «It is this specific concept layered with philosophy that feeds the myth developed through the Age of Enlightenment, the era of disenchantments, the twilight of the idols, all the while maintaining intact the force of challenging transcendence in all the various forms it can manifest».

«Curi, a distinguished expert on the history of thought, studies the myth at three stages in its development: namely, de Molina, Molière and Mozart-Da Ponte. These are the three cornerstones on which he rebuilds a character that reflects the contradictions, certainties and eroticism of our times. A myth that is still young and with which have only just begun to come to terms.» Il Sole 24 ore

«No sex, please, I’m Don Giovanni. Put like this, one might imagine a parodic revisitation of the myth. But no, the statement should be taken literally insofar as common sense and the workings of time often deliver meanings that only philosophical research has the power to trace back to their inevitable complexity.» Robinson, La Repubblica

Umberto Curi is professor emeritus of History of Philosophy at the University of Padova. With Bollati Boringhieri he published: «Pólemos». Filosofia come guerra [«Pólemos». Philosophy as war] (2000), La forza dello sguardo [The power of a glance] (2004), Meglio non essere nati. La condizione umana fra Eschilo e Nietzsche [Better not to be born. The human condition between Aeschylus and Nietzsche] (2008, winner of the Capalbio prize for philosophy), Via di qua. Imparare a morire [Away from here. Learning to die] (2011), L’apparire del bello. Nascita di un’idea [The appearance of beauty. Birth of an idea] (2013) and La porta stretta. Come diventare maggiorenni [The narrow door. How to come of age (2015).

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Giacomo Marramao L’esperimento del mondo. Mistica e filosofia nell’arte di Fabio Mauri [The world experiment. Mysticism and philosophy in the art of Fabio Mauri] October 2018 123 pages

One of Italy’s greatest living philosophers and a great Italian artist. Both have garnered worldwide acclaim. For more than 25 years, Giacomo Marramao and Fabio Mauri interpreted each other in a dialogue that explored the essence of art and thought. Rare vintage material, unpublished readings, introductions to various art exhibitions, which all might have gone lost were it not for this book. Testimony to precious moments in Italian culture over the past few decades. Art and philosophy. Or should we say, art as philosophy? For Giacomo Marramao, the two converge in Fabio Mauri, a leading Italian avant-garde author and playwright whose work incorporated painting, collage, theater, installations (including the famed Il Muro occidentale (The Western Wall) and Del Pianto ed Ebrea (The Crying Jewess), performance art, and writing and theory as different aspects of a single expressive act. “For Mauri, art is a form of doing although confined to the frame of a screen, or to a performance in a workshop, or even live. It’s all about action.” That means gaining experience in the world. It becomes the “deconstruction/reconstruction of the sign machine that swallows up the realities we live in.” When artistic representation incessantly deciphers and rewrites the codes, Marramao, with penetrating clarity, seizes upon that which drives his friend Mauri to go beyond the purely aesthetic dimension. As for Mauri, in Marramao he sees someone whose thoughts are as if “tangible objects”. Marramao, the philospher who “like a Calabrian healer… digs in with his fingers and works on society’s vital organs”, was given a key part in Mauri’s most renowned performance piece, What Philosophy Is. Heidegger and the Germans – Table Concert (world premiere 1989 in L’Aquila, Italy; performed four more times, the latest in 2012 at dOCUMENTA in Kassel, Germany).

Excerpt: From Fabio Mauri’s reading following the world premiere of What Philosophy Is. Heidegger and the Germans – Table Concert (L’Aquila, 1989). For Mauri, reading in itself is an essential component of the action: But what is it exactly that I want to demonstrate – with precision – in this “table concert”? That the difference between Good and Evil speaks the same language? Of course, they do. “We knew it all along,” some will say. There you go – I wanted to know the things you already know. And, please, tell me more. Why? It’s because my foresight system isn’t quite up to par. I’d gladly exchange it for another one – something more common and universal, one that’s right for the times and right for me. Whatever might seem obvious, or just plain common sense, is to me more mysterious than all the depths and riddles. I must be lost. Probably too late to turn back.

«From the very first page the book bolts out with a narrative momentum that is impossible to quell. So that one’s experience of the book resembles Mauri’s approach to being an artist … As Marramao reminds us, [Mauri] is a visionary, a mystic and a meditator. But then he retreats to 26 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected] his workshop to construct (down to the last artisanal detail) his exhibitions-cum-events, part picture, part screen, part memory, part real and human apparition, like the return of the figure (which figures), part happening, and always theatre, author included.» Furio Colombo, Il Fatto Quotidiano

Fabio Mauri is one of the most prominent voices of the Italian avant garde of the post-war period. He lived between Bologna and Milan until 1957, when he moved to Rome. In 1942, he started the magazine Il Setaccio [The Sieve] with his friend Pier Paolo Pasolini. He taught Aesthetics of experimentation at the Academy of Fine Arts of L’Aquila for 20 years. He was invited several times to the Venice Biennale between 1954 and 2015, and to dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel in 2012. The performances of 1971, Ebrea [Jewess] and Che cosa è il fascismo [What fascism is] are emblematic of his work. The latter was first composed in Rome and it then arrived in Venice (1974), New York (1979), Prato (1993) and Klagenfurt (1997). In 1968, together with Balestrini, Sanguineti, Eco, Porta, Barilli, Filippini, Arbasino, Colombo, Manganelli, Giuliani, Costa, Celli, Guglielmi, Pagliarani, Mauri is one of the founders of the magazine “Quindici” [Fifteen]. In the ‘70s, Mauri’s work focused on ideology as subject/object of the expressive acts. In 1976, Mauri started the art magazine “La Città di Riga” [The City of Riga] with Alberto Boatto, Maurizio Calvesi, Jannis Kounellis, Umberto Silva.

Giacomo Marramao teaches Theoretical Philosophy and Political Philosophy at the University of Roma Tre. He is Director of the Fondazione Basso in Rome and member of the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. Among his essays, translated into many languages: Minima temporalia. Tempo, spazio, esperienza [Minima temporalia/ Minimum Temporalia: Tiempo, Espacio, Experiencia, Gedisa 2009], Kairós. Apologia del tempo debito [Kairós. Toward an Ontology of “Due Time”, The Davies Group, 2007 and Gedisa 2009], Cielo e terra. Genealogia della secolarizzazione [Cielo Y Tierra/ Sky and Earth: Genealogia de la secularizacion, Paidos 1998] and Contro il potere. Filosofia e scrittura [Against Power. For an Overhaul of Critical Theory, John Cabot University Press 2016] (Bompiani, 2011). With Bollati Boringhieri he has published: Potere e secolarizzazione. Le categorie del tempo [Power and Secularization. Categories of Time] (2005), Passaggio a Occidente. Filosofia e globalizzazione [Passage to the West. Philosophy and Globalization, Katz editores 2006, Verso Books 2012] (2003, new edition 2009, winner of the Pozzale Luigi Russo Prize) and La passione del presente. Breve lessico della modernità-mondo [The Passion for the Present. A Short Lexicon of Modernity-World, Gedisa 2011] (2008).

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Aldo Bonomi, Pierfrancesco Majorino, Nel labirinto delle paure. Politica, precarietà e immigrazione [A maze of fears. Politics, precariousness and immigration] November 2018 128 pages

Italian people are scared. For the previous generation, the future did not look as grim as it looks today. There was no shortage of social conflicts, but in the Seventies and Eighties (and even more so before that) people felt that by working hard and making the right choices they would be able to give better prospects to their kids, a more prosperous life full of possibilities and hope. The future looked good. Today, things have taken a turn for the worse. Young people do not have expectations for the future, they often earn less money than their parents and have less growth prospects. Opportunities are slimming down and this sets off resentment within society that – as often happens in times of crises – leads to the search for a scapegoat: a clear and visible target to blame for our condition. This has been a central theme in the last election, and the result was unmistakable. The Left has to find its focus again or it will lose all traction. If the unrest of most vulnerable people on the fringes of society is not addressed, it is only natural that the populist and xenophobic forces will take a lead on the conversation. Which is what happened. If the Left wants to regain a central role in the new Italian (and European) society, it is essential to bring the focus back to social issues, work and fight for equality. We have to break the vicious circle of war fueled by fear and resentment among the poor.

Nel labirinto delle paure is the product of a partnership between two prominent figures in Milano that have been playing a leading role in this matter. Aldo Bonomi is a sociologist who has been involved for many years in the social change that is ongoing; Pierfrancesco Majorino is the city’s Councillor for Social Politics and a member of the Democratic Party. Their contribution is not only an analysis of the difficult current situation, but also an appeal to the Left to act with confidence to overcome this explosive state of affairs.

Aldo Bonomi is a sociologist, has collaborated with «Corriere dell Sera», writes on «Il Sole 24 ore» and is the director of the magazine «Communitas». He is the author of Il capitalismo in-finito. Indagine sui territori della crisi (2013), Dialogo sull’Italia. L’eclissi della società di mezzo (with Giuseppe De Rita, 2014) and La società circolare. Fordismo, capitalismo molecolare, sharing economy (2016). For Bollati Boringhieri he published Il trionfo della moltitudine. Forme e conflitti della società che viene (1996), Manifesto per lo sviluppo locale. Teoria e pratica dei patti territoriali (con Giuseppe De Rita, 1998) and Il distretto del piacere (2000).

Pierfrancesco Majorino is Councillor for Social Politics, Health and Rights in the City of Milan. He has been active in social rights since 1998, when he was nominated Councillor of the Department of Social Affairs at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

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Carlo Diano Il pensiero greco da Anassimandro agli Stoici [Greek thought. From Anaximander to the stoics] Introduction by Massimo Cacciari September 2018 202 pages

An original history of Greek thought, from the Presocratics to the Stoics via Plato and Aristotle, presented in a whole new light.

Carlo Diano was the most important classical philologist of the past century. He had a extraordinary knowledge of Greek culture and society, and a prodigious memory that absorbed all forms of Greek. He also had a prolific imagination in philosophy and an intuition for the shape of the mind. With all these sophisticated instruments he ventured into exploring the dark side of Greece and, in these focused and intense few pages, he gave us the most original history of Greek thought from the Presocratics to the Stoics via Plato and Parmenides, Epicurus and Aristotle, all presented in a whole new light. «Greek civilization is so big» – writes Pietro Citati speaking of Diano’s other great book, Forma ed evento – «precisely because it is marked by so many mental shapes: they fight without mercy , they want everything to themselves, until the invisible hand of a god settles them into a higher unit».

Carlo Diano (1902-1974) has been one of the most important scholars of the ancient world and has taught Greek Literature at the University of Padova. He is the author of critical essays that span from philology to literature and philosophy. Among his works is Forma ed evento (1952, n. ed. 1993).

Franco Fabbro Identità culturale e violenza. Neuropsicologia delle lingue e delle religioni [Cultural Identity and violence. Neuropsychology of Languages and Religion] Introduction by Vito Mancuso November 2018 200 pages

The topic of identity is currently one of the most active among nonfiction publications. Neuropsychologist Franco Fabbro has spent decades studying both the religious experience and the representation of language in bilingual and polyglot individuals; here, he investigates language and religion as components of the cultural identity process, which is where aggression and violence take form.

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If talking about identity means entering a dangerous zone, since some of the worst crimes have been perpetrated in its name, it would be impossible to give up the things that, as explained by theologian Vito Mancuso in the introduction – «bring depth and consistency» to human beings through «language, tradition, culture, aesthetic taste, spirituality and thought». Is there a way out from the impasse of identity? Fabbro thinks there is, and it has to do with children. Language and religious practices bring cohesion and identity to social groups, and they are transmitted to us at an early age. The neural pattern pivotal to the comprehension of both, however, is also found with the insurgence of violence. Almost all literature on the subject agrees on this ineradicable ambivalence of identity, but Franco Fabbro’s essay stands out for its ability to retrace concisely and with expertise the evolutionary parable of human kind, not only offering a neuroscientific point of view on the topics of language, religion and violence, but also proposing solutions, something that few have attempted to do. According to him, one of the «most appropriate strategies to reduce violence and reduce human destructiveness» is educational neuroscience: exposing children to plurality, favour plurilingual education and the appropriation of different religions; this would allow saving languages and traditions from extinction without transforming them into cultural cages. Identity cannot be bypassed, but its load can be detoxified.

From the introduction by Vito Mancuso: «What is the image that most accurately describes the flow of history: an ascending arrow or a descending one? Fabbro gives a twofold answer. On one hand he claims people in hunter- gatherer societies lived better because of the pace of work, which was much less stressful than the one that would develop in later agricultural societies; on the other hand, however, he notes how those ancestral societies were affected by chronic violence and constant wars with their neighbouring communities, which meant that their quality of life and safety levels were not better than ours, and the same applied to human rights and respect of individuality because of the pressure on the individual on behalf of the family and clan. Consequently, it becomes impossible to determine whether the terrible violence of the 1900s was always present in human history, only to establish itself so intensely in the past century following the surge in technology, or if that century’s violence is unique also from an ideological point of view, proving that the surge of technology does not correspond to a surge in education, but to increased cruelty and savagery. Today this structural ambiguity of human kind and its history manifests itself supremely through religion. Until religions will continue to function on the principle of us versus them, they will be just like any other institution. They will begin their real job only when they will manage to let go of the «us», renounce the will to power and supremacy and start placing the individual in his alterity, facing the mystery of being and non being, life and death».

Franco Fabbro, a neurologist, is a professor of child Neuropsychiatry at the Department of Medical and Biological Science at the Univeristy of Udine. He is the author of several publications. Among his books: Il cjâf dai furlans. Neuropsicologjie dai sintiments (2000, in friulan language ), Neuropedagogia delle lingue (2004), Neuropsicologia dell’esperienza religiosa (2010, with an introduction by Carlo Sgorlon) and Manuale di neuropsichiatria infantile (2012).

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Marco Aime L’isola del non arrivo. Voci da Lampedusa [The isle of non-arrival. Voices from Lampedusa] March 2018 48.000 words English translation sample available

«On the north side, the island descends abruptly on a rocky cliff that blocks all arrivals, but on the south side it rolls gradually towards the sea, as if knowing that the desperation coming from that direction should not be opposed».

The non-arrival isle is Lampedusa, flat land battered by history and sea winds, European forefront of the Mediterranean border. With his anthropologist’s perspective, Marco Aime immerses himself in the island’s life, sharing thoughts and interviewing people. The result is a multi-voiced narration about a remote and forgotten island, set against the crystalline beauty of the limpid water all around it, yet far enough from the conscience of Italians and Europeans. Lampedusa is a tiny island of a couple of thousands souls – mostly fishermen –scattered with hotels and B&B. Every corner of the island speaks of migrants, shipwrecks, shelters, and the tragedy of October 3rd, 2013. That dreadful day 368 Eritreans or possibly more – we will never know – drowned very close to shore at 7 am in the morning, after two days in the sea. The coastal guards arrived much later; the fishermen, however, made themselves useful. Like many other times in the past (that never reached the media), they gave up their day of work and earnings and, instead of sailing toward the open sea to fill their nets with fish, they rushed towards the wreck and saved 155 people. How do the people of Lampedusa bear such weight? They live the quiet life of a small community, out of the limelight. What consequences does it have for a tiny, remote community to be catapulted in the media stream, everyday on the news, for the simple reason of being on the trajectory of the biggest migratory wave of our times? These are the questions that Marco Aime asks himself while interviewing the people from Lampedusa, observing the landscape and connecting all the voices. The result is a multi-voiced narration with a poetic streak that has nothing to do with indifference and small town mentality; quite the opposite: from every voice, all different from each other, emerges the identity of a conscious, virtuous and deeply human community. Men and women there do not see the “other” as a menace or as an “us vs. them” talk-show conversation; they simply see men and women, each with their own personal tragedy, unique story, name and dignity.

«It is precious to have the opportunity to hear the words of women and men that understand landings very well. Marco Aime has collected “voices form Lampedusa” after having listened to lampedusians in their own homes, with calm and knowledge, allowing them to speak to discover a sparkle of intense humanity within themselves brought by those tragic circumstances.» Enzo Bianchi, Tuttolibri (La Stampa)

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«A collage made of memories, reminiscences and impressions. Like a ship’s log from the Mediterranean.» Sabina Minardi, L’Espresso

«A complex and multifaceted portrait, where solidarity prevails.» Internazionale

«There are places where human rights materialize as concrete gestures, without the need to know the declaration of rights by heart. Places on the border, not only geographically. (…) One of them is Lampedusa.» Leonardo Filippi, Left

«The citizens that Aime talks to do not see immigration as an abstract idea to form an opinion on, but as a reality made of people in danger, that first and foremost need to be saved.» Giuliano Milano, Internazionale

«A honest and passionate report.» Franco Arminio, Doppiozero

«Moving» Gioia!

«It is in the fabric of ordinary life –deep-rooted behaviours as opposed to heroic gestures – that we need to look into if we want to understand the dynamics that allow a community to function and develop a context.» Nigrizia

«A collage of data, memories, voices, reminiscences and colours that is at once a historical essay, a report from the field and a choral narrative (…) The portrait of a community that for more than two decades has shown an inclination to welcome more than to turn away.» L’Osservatore romano

«Zoom to an island that is a metaphor of the world.» Gioia!

Marco Aime (1956), one of the most respected anthropologists in Italy, teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of Genova. Among his publications are: Eccessi di culture (2004), Il primo libro di antropologia (2008), Rubare l’erba (2011), Una bella differenza. Alla scoperta della diversità del mondo (2016), Il soffio degli antenati. Immagini e proverbi africani (2017), La macchia della razza (2017). With Bollati Boringhieri he published: Diario dogon [Dogon Diary] (2000), La casa di nessuno. I mercati in Africa occidentale [Nobody’s house. The markets of West Africa] (2002), L’incontro mancato. Turisti, nativi, immagini [The missed encounter. Tourist, natives, images](2005), Gli specchi di Gulliver. In difesa del relativismo [Gullivers’s mirrors. In defense of relativism] (2006), Timbuctu [Timbuktu] (2008), Il diverso come icona del male [The other as an icon of evil] (2009, with Emanuele Severino), Gli uccelli della solitudine. Solidarietà, gerarchie e gruppi d’età [Birds of solitude. Solidarity, hierarchies and age groups] (2010), Cultura [Culture] (2013).

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Luigi Zoja Centauri. Mito e violenza maschile [Centaurs: myth and male violence] 2016 – 144 pages (30.000 words) + 9 illustrations English translation excerpt available

More fragile and unstable than female identity, male identity struggles to reconcile nature and nurture. As the paternal pole – a fairly recent cultural construction in evolutionary terms – becomes progressively weaker, regressive instinctual behaviours and archaic cruelty resurface. Such a trend is evident in the recent re-emergence of mass rape.

In Greek mythology, Centaurs, half-human half horse creatures, were famous for their sexual frenzy which often led to rapes. In fact, centaurs did not know any other form of sexuality. In analytical psychology, the centaur archetype is reactivated each time that masculinity regresses to the animal herd. The psychic contagion that Zoja calls centaurism functions like possession: it unleashes orgiastic instincts in male gangs, who become prey to a delusion of omnipotence that dulls their mind, abolishes guilty feelings and generates a negative ecstasy, something “like a pogrom, out of control”. Mass rapes, in times of both war and peace, are as old as humankind, but they have been peaking since the end of World War II and through the present age. They can be aimed at genocide in ethnic conflicts or they can be a form of “entertainment” (for example in the practice of jack rolling, in South Africa); sometimes they are sexual assaults performed in public (which has recently happened in Cologne). In all these cases, the aggressors’ drive is rooted in a pre-civilized layer of the unconscious and does not seem to know remission nor punishment. Luigi Zoja confronts us with these eternal, unruly centaurs: everyday news reach back to a millenary history.

Rights licensed: World Spanish (Fondo de Cultura Económica); German ((Psychosozial Verlag).

«Luigi Zoja […] explores the origins of male regression, when the link between biology and culture breaks and the ancient predator archetype comes up. [...] In the Greek Myth the centaurs, half animals and half men, represent the pack that identify the Eros with the orgiastic possession and the rape. Since the Episode of the Sabine Women and earlier, warriors have kidnapped and raped the enemy’s women and, during the centuries, hordes of men felt justified for their crimes committed during and after wars and invasions. After a long time, the same scenario took place in the Latin America. As well as in the cruel 20th-century Europe: the Nazis in Germany and the sexual raids of the Red Army. Up to the 21st Century, when mass rape were carried out during the celebrations of the New Year’s Eve in Cologne in 2015. These episodes clearly show that, when the barriers are broken down, “the centaur, sleeping in the male psyche since prehistory” always wakes up». La Repubblica

«Packs of males excited by the collective rape: the hunt goes on since the dawn of history, goes almost unaltered through the process of civilization, reaches its peak in the middle of the Nineteenth Century and it gains much importance into the news even today. Either it is a war crime, or it is aimed at a genocide, or it is the “normal” brutality in the peacetime routine, the collective rape is the expression of the same instinctiveness of the most ancient barbarity. It is 33 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected] the shadow cone of male identity. This is the main focus of psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja, whose international reputation is due to an investigation on the other male polarity: fatherhood. The conciliation between biology and culture, which is more fragile and precarious in the man than in the woman, has always been subject to imbalance, whose extreme form, in the Greek Myth, is represented by Centaurs, half animals and half humans. Their horde does not know any other form of Eros but the orgiastic excitement of the rape, “untamable as in a pogrom”. Unlike the single rapist, the group is not aware of committing a crime». chetempochefa.blog.rai.it

Praise for The Father: Historical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives:

«Society has elaborated a myth of the father able to praise his sacrifice without downplaying his features: a father is wise as a king, strong as a warrior, waited upon by his Penelope-like wife. Yet, what happens when Penelope becomes emancipated and society dismisses its good old heroes? The myth of the father falls to pieces, and with it the model which sons look up to when they come to shape their own identity». La Repubblica – Il Venerdì

«We have always known that Homer’s two heroes are Achilles, in the Iliad, and Ulysses, in the Odyssey. Still, there is a third hero: Hector, the towering figure in the siege of Troy. In his brilliant Hector’s gesture Junghian psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja outlines Hector’s portrait, the portrait of familiar and unassuming hero, free from the hybris characterizing both Achilles and Ulysses. Hector is father and warrior at the same time». La Repubblica- L’Espresso

Rights for The Father: English: Brunner-Routledge; Spanish: Penguin/Taurus; German: Walter Verlag; French: BPE Éditions; Portuguese (Brazil): Axis Mundi; Chinese: China Social Sciences Press; Russian: Publishing Group URSS; Czech: Prostor; Lituanian: Ciklonas; Slovenian: Zalozba Tangram; Korean: Renaissance Publishing.

Rights for Paranoia: World Spanish: Fondo de Cultura Económica; French: Les Belles Lettres.

Psyche [Psiche] Series: Sampietrini September 2015 – 160 pages

«The psyche exists. In fact, it is existence itself.» C.G. Jung

Nothing is more real than our immaterial part: the psyche. To define it, though, is an exercise in acrobatics. Our eyes may well look in any direction, but they will never see the pupil. In much the same way, our psyche does not have an external Archimedic point on which it can rest. A person’s psychic processes are observed only through his psychical singularity. Luigi Zoja, world-renowned Jungian psychoanalyst (his works are translated into fourteen languages), has started from this very point. And he has gone very far. His research ground is interspersed with persistent misunderstandings that demand a solution: for example the derivation of depth psychology – psychoanalysis – from the main branch of general psychology. In fact, the contrary is true. The very notion of cure radically differs from the medical model, in which healing means to restore the pre-disease state. 34 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected]

Psychoanalytical work moves the patient away from his/her starting point, because – as Freud clearly understood – “the essence of mental disease lies in a return to earlier states of affective life and of functioning.” Entering into a dialogue with the great scholars of the psyche, Zoja has happily found his way, off the beaten path.

Praise for Psyche

«Although we are used to the concept of unconscious, we tend to underestimate one of its main aspects: intrusiveness. Few of us would think of giving it a key role in economic crises, in wars, or even just in the management of the artistic heritage. Yet, if we trace back the history of humankind as if it were a long psychoanalytic session, we notice the signs of this intrusion are everywhere. An essay by psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja, Psiche, shows this clearly, reminding us that the study of what Jung called “collective unconscious” has an inestimable predictive value». Il Venerdì – La Repubblica

«Zoja, one of the most important Jungian analysts, resolves some misunderstandings, starting from the one about the theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis, that cannot be equated to the model of natural sciences, or to the medical model of cure as restoration of a previous state. Among his great merits, last but not least is the effort at adjusting the concept of “mind”, and so of psychoanalysis, to the changes in the individual and in contemporary society». L’Unità

«A valuable little book». Antonio Gnoli, La Repubblica

«Un prezioso vademecum sull’opera di Jung» Il Manifesto

Former President of IAAP (World association of Jungian analysts), Luigi Zoja has worked in Zurich, New York and Milan. His writings have been translated into fifteen languages. With Bollati he published: Il gesto di Ettore. Preistoria, storia, attualità e scomparsa del padre, New Updated Edition, March 2016 [The Father: Historical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives, Routledge 2018; Penguin/Taurus 2018; Les Belles Lettres, 2015; Walter Verlag 2002; Chinese Edition, World Publishing Corporation, 2015], Psiche [Psyche], 2015; Paranoia. La follia che fa la storia, 2011 [Paranoia: The Madness that Makes History, Routledge, March 2017, Le Belles Lettres, forthcoming; Chinese Edition/World Publishing Corporation, 2015]; Contro Ismene. Considerazioni sulla violenza 2009 [Violence in History, Culture, and the Psyche: Essays, Spring Journal Books, New Orleans, 2009]; Al di là delle intenzioni, 2011 [Ethics and Analysis; Philosophical Perspectives and their Application in Therapy, Texas A & M University Press, College Station, 2007]. He was twice awarded the Gradiva US prize for psychological works published in English (The Father and Ethics and Analysis).

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Rossana Rossanda Questo corpo che mi abita [This body that inhabits me] Edited by Lea Melandri January 2018 128 pages (26.000 words)

A ninety-three-year-old girl who’s had an intense life, a committed and passionate fighter of injustice. Rossana Rossanda is still the “twentieth-century girl” of her famous autobiography; yet, nothing is more remote from her than the pretense of youthfulness, or its ideological cheap version. Even when she considers her ageing body, Rossanda still adopts her rational and sharp attitude, which she never gave up when taking stance on political events.

In this collection of articles Rossanda feels the onset of the fragile temporality of decline, the amiable dissonance between “the autobiography of a political I” and the “everything is sexed”, the motto of feminist orthodoxy. A personal perspective that, especially nowadays, addresses our perplexities and invites us not to surrender to conformism Facing the body: one’s body, examined without shedding tears in its everlasting imperfection and in its incipient ageing. And the bodies of other women close to us, or unreachable as film stars. Thoughts spring from that very mental spot, they originate in the very distance between the self and the relentless materiality that inhabits it. “This body that inhabits me and that I inhabit escapes me and comes back from all sides, as the eel of my consciousness, an eel that sticks to ‘me’.” For Rossanda, “embracing immediately the female biological specificity, one apparently opaque and unperceived, like breath, is impossible.” Yet, the heresy of failed identification does not express itself with as much emotivity as would a grammar.” Perhaps these very pages, against their own intention, do throb, and they reach intimate spots even when they apparently deal with something else, with the memoirs of French women revolutionists, with cinema, or with canons of beauty.

World English rights licensed to Seagull Books

Extract «Your body changes its way of moving over the years, yet it’s not like being ill. I’ve had so many illnesses, the most known ones. Yet I’d rather say I passed through them: either you died, or they passed. In my case, they passed. The disfigurements of old age are something else. I watch my hands on the keyboard, as I write. They were “form”, oh yes they were. They were beautiful. So beautiful that, if someone said to me “how beautiful your hands are!”, I used to answer, “yes, they’re the most beautiful ones I’ve ever seen”, thus closing the argument and making myself obnoxious by stating the truth. They were the hands of Verrocchio’s girls, long, tapering, sinewy. I liked being plain yet having beautiful hands: for it is a secret beauty, in a way, one only you are aware of, not a garish kind of beauty. Still, these hands of mine have gone mad. Each joint has a little bump on it, a little horn, bumpy, uneven, as if it were pushing under the bone to come out. On my left forefinger, which has typed so many words, there’s some sort of crooked knob. The veins on the back of my hand are bluish – I actually liked them this way on my mother – and there are brown spots. Never mind. The skin is strange, it looks like a tortoise. Hands are always there, you cannot forget them. They tell me my body is leaving me. It does. I don’t. Again, we are not together. I watch it, and I’m outraged.»

«An astounding and intimate confession. (…) one wonders if in fifty years there will still be mothers like these, able to astonish you every time, taking things one step further in a variety of 36 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected] topics: femininity, sex, love, women’s erotic desirability. The enigma of the body and the mystery of death.» Simonetta Fiori, il Venerdì (La Repubblica)

«[Rossanda] is close to being a hundred years old, “last century’s girl”, an aristocratic between politics and culture, often compared to Nike of Samothrace – the Louvre’s masterpiece – by friends and partners. Is it because of the broken wings? Is it because –metaphors aside – Questo corpo che mi abita [This body that inhabits me] is leaving? Actually – as the lady herself points out - “lui se ne va, non io” – the body is leaving, I am not.» Bruno Quaranta, La Stampa

«These writings are exquisite. Of course Rossanda does not renounce her totalitarian political choice at any point; however, she does seem to trace a path: from the first essay, Autodifesa di un io politico –Self-defence of the political identity–, which clearly illustrates her position already in the title, to the last one, Questo corpo che mi abita (that gives the title to the collection), where the incipient old age forces her to see, with the signs of the inevitable decay, the things that up until that moment were ignored or put to the side in order to focus elsewhere.» Alberto Asor Rosa, La Repubblica

«Rossanda is asking herself, and all of us, a question that nowadays seems to have finally reached both Western and Eastern societies: what chances are there for women not to be owned by the body they inhabit? How can they avoid being invariably reduced to a pre-scripted body (on an illusory edge, as RR writes, “between maternity and seduction”) without negating or neglecting it? A colossal issue still to be investigated, that explains the awkwardness, the silence, the messy choices of so many women and men that cannot imagine themselves outside the dualism that has haunted centuries of social and political history.» Maria Nadotti, Doppiozero

«Questo corpo che mi abita has been a revelation. Women’s bodies slide away and come back: “come fosse l’anguilla della mia coscienza”, – like an eel inside my conscience –, an eel attached to “me”.» Barbara Stefanelli, Io Donna (Corriere della sera)

«It is not grievous but undignified; it is not an illness, just the body aging, and Rossana Rossanda looks at it the same way that Joan Didion does: with precision and no mercy. Sometimes she despises it, but always with curiosity. “ The body is always intriguing.”» Annalisa Benini, Il Foglio

«A magnificent essay.» Giulia Crivelli, Il Sole 24 ore

Former member of parliament and journalist Rossana Rossanda (1924) is a prominent Italian intellectual. In charge of the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano) cultural policies during the Sixties, she was expelled from the party in 1968, together with Luigi Pintor, Lucio Magri, Valentino Parlato, Aldo Natoli and Luciana Castellina, with whom she founded il manifesto, first movement and later daily newspaper. She currently lives in Paris. She’s the author of several political essays, and she has recently published her memoir and essays on major existential issues, among which La vita breve. Morte, resurrezione, immortalità [Brief life. Death, resurrection, immortality] (with Filippo Gentiloni, 1996) and La ragazza del secolo scorso [The girl from the last century] (2005). With Bollati Boringhieri she published Note a margine [Margin notes] (1996) and La perdita [The loss] (with Emanuela Fraire, 2008).

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Tommaso Maccararo e Claudio M. Tartari Storia del dove. Alla ricerca dei confine del mondo [A history of where. Looking for the boundaries of the world] 2017 – 33.000 words English translation sample available

Since the very first time man began measuring the space around him, wonder never ceased. The question "Where are we?" looks like an easy one and yet the answer is anything but simple. The question is still open. Conclusions are always provisional, always questioned by new findings. The space gets bigger and bigger, the notion of "where" becomes broader. It is not just the Big Bang or the universe expanding: it is our perception of the space that broadened over time, becoming more and more complex and making us smaller and smaller, lost in a "where" now limitless. In this short but dense and enjoyable book, Maccacaro and Tartari bring us from the fuzzy space of the valleys inhabited by Homo Erectus to the cosmogonic myths of ancient cultures, introducing us to the first representations of the world. Leafing through their book we will learn that the great Empires of the Bronze Age already created sophisticated conceptual maps, while the stars already helped travellers to find their way. Heavenly space constantly intersected with the space on earth, and in classical antiquity the space began to dilate. During the Middle Ages calculation and navigation tools became more refined. Eventually, the discovery of a new continent radically changed our notion of "where", and subsequent exploration rapidly filled with names the spaces previously left blank on ancient parchment maps. In the Modern Age, lenses made the sky bigger, leading to the discovery of new planets. Stars quickly turned into galaxies, while new theories literally reshaped the world. "Where" is now an elastic, time-related, limitless and ever changing concept.

W/Spanish rights licensed to Siruela; Chinese to Kuwei Culture

«We manage to immerse ourselves in a universe which is a billion times bigger than us. It is a wondrous achievement and its history, well depicted in Tommaso Maccararo and Claudio Tartari’s book, ultimately coincides with the history if thought and science.» Vincenzo Barone, Il sole 24 ore

«A fascinating story where philosophy and geography mix, along with measure of time and space». Patrizia Caraveo, Il sole 24 ore

«In this book, dense and complex (…) Once finished reading, what is left is mostly the excitement of the intellectual challenge taken by humanity in the course of thousands of years (and with an extraordinary acceleration in recent times) and the beauty of theories recently developed by scientific research, giving shape to our “place”». Mauro Capocci, Le Scienze

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«A small but dense book about man’s interminable journey, eager to find out his place in the universe, a “place” not only in the topographical sense, but also a question about human existence, a “where am I” that leads to a “where am I going?”». Piero Bianucci, La Stampa

Tommaso Maccaro (Pavia 1951) is an astrophysicist. He has done research in Italy, the UK and the US and has published more than 250 papers on major international journals. He has been head of committees within the ESO and the ES, as well as head of Brera's Osservatorio Astronomico and president of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica. He has been recently writing on a number of popular journals and newspapers.

Claudio M. Tartari (Milano, 1951) graduated in Medieval History at the University of Milan. He has been chief librarian in a library with a historical-legal focus in Milan.

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Gabriella Greison Sei donne che hanno cambiato il mondo. Le grandi scienziate che hanno rivoluzionato la fisica [Six women who changed the world. The great scientists who revolutionized physics] September 2017 – 288 pages (58.000 words) English translation sample available

Six lives in a compelling narration Six extraordinary women Six short novels you’ll be happy to get lost in

Marie Curie (1867-1934), Lise Meitner (1878-1968), Emmy Noether (1882-1935), Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958), Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000), Mileva Marić (1875-1948). These are the magnificent six. Except for Marie Curie their names are essentially unknown to the general reading public. They are just ordinary women names. These women were all born within a lapse of fifty years and they worked through the most crucial and roaring years of the twentieth century, years of atrocious wars (which they experienced first-hand), and of great advancement in sciences. These women advanced sciences. There’s a Polish chemist who could not attend university, the Jewish physicist whom the Nazis hated, the German mathematician whom nobody loved, the English crystallographer whose discoveries were snatched, the Hollywood star who became a military engineer and the Serbian theorist overshadowed by her husband.

So what about Hedy Lamarr? Wasn’t she an actress? Yes, she was an actress. The Hollywood diva, the first full nudity in the history of cinema (1929), defined by all sides the most beautiful woman in the world before Marilyn Monroe. But she was also an engineer, and a talented one. She invented modern wireless communication, the very one we use with our phones.

Of course, the six heroines presented by Gabriella Greison are not the only six women in sciences, but, with their will, their skills, their talent and hard work, they paved the way for fellow women scientists to come in an all-men world. They gave us their discoveries. But they also made us aware of the fact that women could, in fact had to, be allowed to choose science as their career. Their centuries-long banishment has already come at a very high price for humankind. Six terrific stories, with a touch of fairytale. They are not always cheerful stories, they do not always have a happy ending, because they are real stories, of achievements and failures. We laugh and cry, as should be. Still, thanks to these six icons of twentieth-century science and to their example it was less hard for other women to find their way and to give us the fruits of their knowledge and imagination. To name but some of them: Amalia Ercoli Finzi, Fabiola Gianotti, Barrè Sinoussi, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, Barbara McClintock, Wu Chieng-Shiung, Vera Rubin, Jocelyn Bell, Lisa Randall, Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier…These names might not ring a bell to the general reading public, but for the first time these women were the principal investigators of huge research teams, carrying out cutting-edge research. More and more women are following in their wake: they love sciences, they graduate in sciences, they take a Ph.D. in sciences and they’ll be free to give us the fruits of their brilliant minds.

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For all this we have to thank our six magnificent women: Marie, Lise, Emmy, Rosalind, Hedy e Mileva. Thank you.

With the L’incredibile cena dei fisici quantistici ([The incredible dinner of quantum physicists] Salani, 2016, 30.000 copies sold), Gabriella Greison has become a star of popularization in Italy. Her Monologo quantistico [Quantum monologue] has been staged in theatres throughout the country. Her way of popularizing physics has set a landmark.

«Greison portrays the fictionalized life of six brave women of science of the 1900s that, despite overwhelming difficulties, have left a mark in the field of science and made an impact on humanity.» Alessio Cozzolino, Corriere della Sera

«On a total of five hundred Nobel Prize winners, only eleven are women scientists. This alone demonstrates that the road ahead is still long. (…) For this reason Gabriella Greison decided to gather in a book the stories of six women that changed the world, six great physicists that made history.» Cristina De Stefano, La Repubblica

«The author wants us to understand how these women’s real vicissitudes – personal and professional – can ‘represent something other’ and be somehow meaningful for generations to come.» Eva Grippa, D La Repubblica

«In the past two years Greison, a journalist, has become a phenomenon on both the online and the offline scenes.» Marianna Rizzini, Il Foglio

«The author structures the book – an homage to its heroines – in an original and intriguing way: six shorts novels.» Giulia Ciarapica, Il Foglio

«Six stories of women that had to fight strenuously to affirm their individuality.» Domenico Ribatti, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno

«A book that literally shines, starting from the cover.» Alberto Mosconi, Galileo

Gabriella Greison is a physicist, a writer and a professional journalist. After completing a MA degree in Physics at Milan University, she worked at Paris École Polytechnique for two years. She has collaborated with several research institutes and scientific museums and she has contributed to several magazines and dailies. At the moment she is scriptwriter and host of the TV show Pillole di fisica [Physics 101], a weekly show on RaiNews24. Her latest book, The incredible dinner of quantum physicists has been published in 2016. She’s been recently staging her play 1927. Quantum Monologue, where she focuses on the humane side of twentieth-century physics who made history. The play is always highly demanded throughout the country.

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Gherardo Colombo Democrazia [Democracy] New Revised Edition February 2018 98 pages (15.500 words) 30–pages English translation sample available

Imperfect, demanding, fragile; and yet indispensable. Unrivalled, when it comes to safeguard the pursuit of individual happiness in the respect and consideration of others. Democracy. We breathe it every single day, it forms our mental landscape and our basic vocabulary, so much so that it would be hard to outline its features, as it often happens for things that are too familiar. Probably, we would not be able to go beyond the definition we were taught at school – «people’s rule» – without questioning the fact that neither «people» nor «rule» are obvious concepts, and that linking them has relevant implications. And there’s more to it: if we link them, we are assuming that each of us should play a conscious and active role, without being content with entrusting it to the people that represent us. To rule a complex society, we need principles, rules, scopes, and limits, but also an education to citizenship. These are the meanings implied by the word «democracy», as it is explained by Gherardo Colombo with the simple heartiness of someone who is performing a civic gesture. Colombo is able to manipulate notions such as «freedom», «rights», «duty», «equality», «justice» – all of them elaborated through the centuries by our culture – so as to show their intimate connection with present forms of community. And he has surprises in store for us. In the end, it becomes evident that democracy is all about us: it expresses our painstaking search for perfection, whether we call it a form of government or simply an organising model of society.

World Spanish rights licensed to Hidalgo.

Gherardo Colombo has been Public Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutors Office in Milan and counsellor at the Court of Cassation, and is currently president of Garzanti Libri. Amongst his latest essays: Educare alla legalità (with Anna Sarfatti, 2011), Il perdono responsabile. Perché il carcere non serve a nulla (2013), La tua giustizia non è la mia. Dialogo fra due magistrati in perenne disaccordo (with Piercamillo Davigo, 2016) and Il legno storto della giustizia (with Gustavo Zagrebelsky, 2017).

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Anna Meldolesi E l’uomo creò l’uomo. CRISPR e la rivoluzione dell’editing genomico [And man created man. CRISPR and the revolution of genome editing] 2017 160 pages (53.000 words) English translation sample available

It has a difficult name, and yet the most recent biotechnology, called CRISPR, represents the brave new world we are entering right now, right here. This book explains for the first time what CRISPR is and what it can accomplish, as well as how it will shape our future, for better or worse. In the last two years a new system of genetic engineering has taken over labs worldwide. International press introduced it as a giant leap forward, the dawn of a brand new era. A racing car on a DNA roller-coaster or a stick of dynamite in the heart of genome are two of the images used by scientific journals to illustrate CRISPR. Why such an excitement? CRISPR technology is as precise and versatile as a sharp blade. It is cheap and easy to use. It can be employed to modify multiple genes in one shot and it makes possible a wide array of hitherto unthinkable experiments. And all this thanks to bacteria: it is by studying bacteria that scientists bumped into this discovery, almost by chance (indeed they invented CRISPR so as to shield themselves from viruses). The acronym stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, but such an obscure definition relates to a surprisingly simple biological process. It is a tool that – if aptly adjusted to mammals – makes it possible to find any DNA sequence and change it with any other of our choice. We talk about genome editing, as if we had to do with a word processor:

Find: “scence” Replace with: “science” Change all. End.

It is almost as easy as to correct typos in a document processed by an inexperienced writer. Except that the “document” is a defective gene, causing a severe disease: CRISPR identifies and amends it in the cells so that the disease almost miraculously disappears, at least theoretically. So far so good, then? Well, not quite. On one hand our technology is not so efficient as to be implemented on patients in the near future; on the other, not every disease is genetically determined and even for those originating in the genes we do not always know which genes are responsible. Last but not least, an exchange in the genetic pool might cause problems that are not easy to foresee. However, if it holds its promises, genome editing is bound to become one of the biggest breakthroughs in life sciences. It will be used, for instance, to prevent mosquitos from reproducing themselves, thus eradicating diseases such as malaria. This new technology will surely enough be used in the agri-food sector, to modify our food, with unprecedented precision. It could even help overcome the ban proclaimed by some countries against GMOs, as technically we would not have transgenic organisms but only “corrected” ones. There is another problem, though, and not a minor one. When we will able to change the genes as we like, what will prevent this technique, so easy and so viable, to end up in the wrong 43 Bollati Boringhieri editore – Frankfurt Book Fair 2018 [email protected] hands? Is there the risk that CRISPR will be used to create “custom made” babies or even “super-babies” bringing back to life eugenic ghosts? How long will it take before genome editing is used on human embryos, wondered Jennifer Doudna, one of the leading figures in this scientific discovery. Alas, too late. It did happen already, in China. Welcome to the brave new world of CRISPR, where fear and hope coexist, and the fragile boundary between the natural and the artificial has been erased. This book by Anna Meldolesi – matter of factly, easy to read, challenging - is the best guide to understand this ongoing revolution.

«This book has hit me not only for the new world it describes, but for the heartfelt narrative tone used to tell it. It is a science book that one reads with real participation of the reader.» Corrado Augias, Rai3 interview

«This book is an excellent instrument to understand the impact of the ongoing revolution, useful for all the readers that want to get an idea about what CRISPR is and how it works […], useful also for the most discerning palates, given the vast amount of researches and possible applications analyzed by the author» Le Scienze (scientific supplement of La Repubblica)

«[After Dolly, the sheep cloned 20 years ago, and the human genome maps - two enterprises that failed to live up the general expectations] are we wrong again? Anna Meldolesi, author of the first popular book on CRISPR published in Italy is well aware of the risks entailed by this new endeavour and yet she does not hesitate to answer in the negative: “No, we are not overdoing it. This is how science proceeds”. After the great expectations aroused by a new discovery there is always a steep fall into disappointment. And yet, do not be mistaken! Falling does not mean failing. Some technologies, only the best ones, are bound to rise again, climbing back up with more realistic objectives. This time our hopes take the shape of a hill and we can name it implementation's slope» Antonio Polito, director of Il Corriere della Sera «Anna Meldolesi's book is a most useful guide to a topic that will both be at the core of scientific and technological progresses in the years to come and arouse a fair amount of controversies. It is a well researched book as well as a pleasant read, unbiased and low-key. It is based on facts and science, it never yields to the paranoid fears of technophobes nor does it embrace the clichés, cheap non-sense and delusions of grandeur that are so typical of scientists when they address the ethical, political and legal implications of their research» Gilberto Corbellini, Il Sole 24 Ore «The first book in Italian on genome editing […] It is important to stress that it is the first one, as it fills a gap in the public debate on the impact of this scientific research strand and its ensuing applications» MicroMega/ La Mela di Newton

Anna Meldolesi, BA in Biology from the University of Bologna and MA in Science communication from the SISSA (Trieste), writes regularly for the «Corriere della Sera», whose website hosts her blog Lost in Galapagos. She is co-funder of the journal «Darwin» and she writes for «Nature Biotechnology». In 2000 she was awarded the Maria Golinelli Price, European Award for Journalism in Genetics. Among her publications, Organismi geneticamente modificati. Storia di un dibattito truccato (2001), Mai nate. Perché il mondo ha perso 100 milioni di donne (2011) e Elogio della nudità (2015).

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Cristoforo Sergio Bertuglia, Franco Vaio Il fenomeno urbano e la complessità. Concezioni sociologiche, antropologiche ed economiche di un sistema complesso territoriale [Urban phenomenon and complexity. Sociological, anthropological and economic concepts of a complex spatial system] February 2019 450 pages

What is more complex than an urban system where human beings, buildings, activities, infrastructures and services all interact in a nonlinear way? Since more than half of the world population lives in urban areas, it is crucial to study this with the appropriate tools.

With absolute competence and fluency, C. S. Bertuglia and F. Vaio delve into the urban phenomenon with the only approach able to decode it: complexity, which has given up all partial views because of their unproductiveness. If a complex system is defined as a whole that acts and evolves according to a logic non reducible to the sum of its parts, the definition perfectly adapts to urban areas, big entities constantly unbalanced that organize themselves and proceed thanks also to an internal antagonistic concept. The goal of the science of complexity is to see clearly through the tangle, seemingly inextricable, of the people who live, work and commute, of physical structures and imposing nontangible networks of goods and transports. C. S. Bertuglia and F. Vaio follow a path from the preindustrial city, entrenched in the territory, to the industrial one, where urbanism is elevated to a form of life, to the megacity of the post- industrial era, where the physical space is replaced by a reticular process that connects production and consumer centres. Between globalization, gentrification and expulsion, today’s dynamics respond to an appropriative and expansive model, where complexity is set against a view from below, mindful of common assets.

Cristoforo Sergio Bertuglia has thought urban planning at the Politecnico di Torino and has been president of the Italian Association of Regional Science and vice president of the Italian Association of Operational Research.

Franco Vaio has thought Math at the Politecnico di Torino. He has been involved in high- energy physics and industrial researches in the field of speech synthesis and recognition. For more than twenty years C. S. Bertuglia and F. Vaio have worked together on the elaboration of mathematical models in the context of regional science. With Bollati Boringhieri they published Non linearità, caos, complessità. Le dinamiche dei sistemi naturali e sociali (2003, n. ed. 2007; Non linearity, chaos and complexity, Oxford University Press, 2005) and Complessità e modelli. Un nuovo quadro interpretativo per la modellizzazione nelle scienze della natura e della società (2011).

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Massimo Recalcati Melanconia e creazione in Vincent Van Gogh – Nuova edizione [Melancholy and creation in Vincent Van Gogh – New edition] 2014 158 pages + 8 coloured plates

Nobody has ever connected Van Gogh’s melancholy to his painting, thus acknowledging the autonomy of art and without relying solely – and simplistically – on biographical evidence: Massimo Recalcati has finally done it. Establishing new and fruitful connections between facts, Recalcati moves form the source of Van Gogh’s psychosis within his family – Vincent was born on the first anniversary of his brother’s death and bore his name – through his choice of living as an outsider because of the disgrace of being a substitute-son, to his total devotion to painting, to the “high yellow note”, that is, to the incandescence of Southern light as he was able to capture it on the cloth. Did you think you knew each and every shade of Van Gogh’s palette and life? Recalcati will show you how much we have been missing.

Rights licensed: French (Ithaque), W/Spanish (Gedisa), Chinese (Beijing Chensheng Culture Comunication)

«We owe Recalcati a deep renewal of psychoanalytic studies in Italy». Roberto Esposito, La Repubblica

«Recalcati’s book goes over the painter’s life, tracing his efforts to find a possible symbolical inscription, in spite of the experience of refusal. His painting is the ultimate attempt to reach the absolute through light and colour». L’Unità

«A coincise but solid reading of Van Gogh’s work from a psychoanalytic angle». La Repubblica

Massimo Recalcati is a Lacanian psychoanalyst and teaches Psychopathology of eating behaviour at Pavia University. The scientific director of the Irpa (Istituto di Ricerca di Psicoanalisi Applicata) School of Specialization in Psychotherapy, he recently published Le mani della madre. Desiderio, fantasmi ed eredità del materno (Feltrinelli 2015), L’ora di lezione. Per un’erotica dell’insegnamento (Einaudi 2014); Non è più come prima. Elogio del perdono nella vita amorosa (Cortina, 2014), Il complesso di Telemaco. Genitori e figli dopo il tramonto del padre (Feltrinelli 2013). With Bollati Boringhieri he published Anoressia, bulimia e obesità [Anorexia, bulimia, obesity] (2006) and Forme contemporanee del totalitarismo [Contemporary forms of totalitarian power] (2007).

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Cosimo Schinaia Pedofilia e psicoanalisi. Figure e percorsi di cura [Paedophilia and psychonalysis. Issues and healing practices] New revised, updated and expanded edition January 2019 300 pages

New revised edition of a reference book translated into six languages

Cosimo Schinaia has filled a gap in psychoanalytic literature since Freud’s times. His definitions for notions of abuse have become established and have been entered in Battaglia’s Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana (2004 and 2009 supplements).

The first edition of Schinaia’s book was published in 2001: in the meantime, paedophilia has aroused a great deal of interest, also due to the transformations in its social dimension. On the one side, after a long concealment, it has begun to emerge within the catholic Church. On the other, with its unlimited offer of paedo-pornographic images, the World Wide Web has triggered the re-aggregation of internal eroticized instincts that were previously disorganized, which are very likely to be acted upon. Yet, therapy has been hesitant in providing a thorough approach to the paedophile’s psychopathology, its resistance due to the difficulty in overcoming disgust for similar behaviours. Schinaia believes instead that psychoanalysis is the “only device offering a way out from the polarization between blaming and acceptance that seems to limit and impoverish the debate on paedophilia nowadays.” The most promising therapeutic approach seems the one based on the distinction between different kinds of paedophilia, one which acknowledges their diverse phenomenology and clinical complexity. Paedophilic perversity is not to be confused with paedophilic perversion, or with incestuous sexual abuse (paedophiles who have children are in most cases non-abusing parents). This is the only way to really understand who a paedophile actually is, “what kind of feelings he has, what kind of emotions, what are the reasons for his behaviour.”

Rights to the first edition licensed to: French (L'Harmattan); World English (Karnac Books); Portuguese (Editora da Universidade de São Paulo); World Spanish (El Duende); German (Psychosozial Verlag)

Cosimo Schinaia, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is full member in charge of training of the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana and full member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He directed the psychiatric hospital of Cogoleto and the national health system Mental Health Department in Genoa. Among his publications, Dal manicomio alla città. L’«altro» presepe di Cogoleto [From the mental hospital to the city. Cogoleto’s “other” crib] (1997), Il dentro e il fuori. Psicoanalisi e architettura [Inside/Outside. Psychoanalysis and architecture] (2014) and Interno esterno. Sguardi psicoanalitici su architettura e urbanistica [Inside/Outside. Psychoanalytic views on architecture and city planning] (2016).

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