Italian Fiction Fall 2013

Transcription

Italian Fiction
Fall 2013
The novels by Marta Franceschini
Marta Franceschini (b. 1959) lives and works in Bologna. Graduated in Oriental History, a freelance
journalist, she has lived in Britain, the United States and for three years in India, where she has been a
freelance correspondent for several Italian newspapers ("L'Espresso", "Noi Donne", "Quotidiani
Associati" , etc..). She made her debut as a writer in 2000 with La discesa della paura (Sellerio), which
gained the award at the Festival of the First Novel in Cuneo in 2001 and was translated into German
in the same year. With Marlin she published Sangue del mio sangue (2006), and then La valigia di Agafia.
Also, she edited the texts of the play La donna imperfetta (Tita Ruggeri) and, in 2007, directed the
documentary "Ero nata per volare" (Enza Negroni) for the Museo della Memoria in Bologna.
A girl grows up in a nightmarish world of abuse, neglect
and loneliness. With a dying mother and a tyrant father, life
has precious little to offer. But for how long can one mute
victim? While a desire for revenge is natural, some
questions remain to be answered. What if that relationship
of abuse and domination is the only relationship she has
ever known? Being a victim has been the only identity so
far, and violence has become an inextricable part of her.
How will she ever emerge from this? Or, will she at all?
Marlin editore
120 pages
11.90 euro
Jilted by her lover on her eighteenth birthday, Agafia, an
Moldavian girl, decides that she will go far away to start a
new life. That is when she gets her first suitcase. From
being a labourer in a tobacco field to working as a
domestic help in Italy, life is a continuous struggle for
Agafia. But surprisingly, her story is not an endless saga of
pain, what shines through, apart from her incredible
capacity to endure, is her zest for life. Pain, deception and
even violence are not enough to prevent her from falling in
love yet again. But will this love be any different from the
ones she has known in the past?
Marlin editore
108 pages
11.00 euro
Agenzia Servizi Editoriali
Via Livorno 515/c, I-20099, Sesto S. Giovanni (Mi), tel. + 39 02 2408204
[email protected] - www.serv-ed.it
Massimo Vitali
Se son rose
Fernandel
Pagine : 176
Prezzo : 13,00 €
ISBN : 978-88-95865-56-0
Take the belly of a man, Roversi. Add a wife, a job and two hundreds pounds of habits.
Now be rude: remove wife, work and habits. On the other hand, lock the two hundreds
pounds in the ladies toilet of the Corallo movie theatre.
Roversi is determined not to come out until he has completed the period of reflection
that many have suggested him to take, so the rest of the world has to look for him:
priests, maniacs, photographers, dogs, transvestites, psychoanalysts, blacksmiths, doorto-door salesmen. And women, of course.
Roversi gives audience to everybody, but he will not open the door to anyone.
Massimo Vitali is born in Bologna in 1978. By day he works at the
complaints department of a Swedish multinational thet is not Ikea. In the
evening he is swimming teacher in a pool where you can grow mushrooms.
In 2009 he won the Subway Literature Award with his story "Compensation
(small love story)." In 2010, his story "The patient love of boomerang" was
included in the anthology 30 secondi di universo ( Marcos y Marcos ). In the
same year Fernandel published his debut novel, L'amore non si dice. Since
2011 he has been the host of the programme “Ufficio Reclami” on Radio
City Fujiko 103.1 FM.
Although much of his time he is walking in the clouds, that does not mean
he has dropped with the latter rain.
Donata Vittani
Allegra
Ibis 2012
13 x 21 cm
158 pages
ISBN: 9788871644134
12.00 euro
“… Although her teacher had repeatedly emphasized that only from outside the tango appears a
sensual dance, while it is a meeting of souls, Alice was uncomfortable with the extreme closeness with
unknown men, whose souls she could not feel at all, while from their bodies she clearly felt the smell of
sweat and just finished dinner. She was stiff and awkward in her futile attempt to move with ease. As
a palo borracho, the 'drunk trees' in Buenos Aires, clumsy and awkward in a trunk swollen and full
of thorns.”
The search for the friend disappeared in Buenos Aires for the forty year old Alice
becomes a journey between past and present, old and new loves, painful discoveries and
unexpected returns. At the junction between the everyday life in the Lombard province
and the extraordinary nature of the Argentine capital.
A short text to be read all in one breath, a direct style that alternates narration,
flashbacks and close dialogue, which is essential for the complicity of the reader. Up to
the end.
Professor and researcher at the Academy of Communication of Milan for twelve years,
Donata Vittani has always supported her teaching activity with the work of copy
editor for publishing houses, editorial and advertising agencies and cultural associations.
She currently lives and works in Como, and is copywriter for JDM communication, a
company of which she is a partner and co-founder. Allegra is her first novel.
Anna Ruchat
Il malinteso
Ibis 2012
11 x17 cm
56 pages
ISBN: 9788871643946
8.00 euro
“After the first visit to the old factory, I keep coming back there, in the days and weeks
that follow. The apocalyptic background of ruined walls, piles of rubble, remains of
rails inside the sheds, with its shacks made of boards and old doors taken from
construction sites and with dozens of beggars of all kinds: browny men and bullies, very
young mothers and grandmothers, countless children, with the smell of chemical fumes
and the squeak of mice, a stone's throw from my house, exert a strong call on me,
almost an attraction that I do not want to fight but I'm trying to narrow down as far as I
can.” Around us there are invisible groups of people who live on the edge of our richest
cities. The figure easier to point at, is that of the Roma, the gypsy, of course. Their
families pass next to us, show up and disappear in the fields that are named after them “campi zingari”, or in the ruins of abandoned factories and crumbling warehouses,
remains of an industrial era long gone.
Talking to them, meeting them, hearing their stories, let them emerge from the darkness:
stories, reflections, poems - this is the book that comes out from this encounter.
Anna Ruchat, writer and translator, has been awarded with the Premio
Chiara and the Schiller Prize for her stories collected int the book In questa
vita (2005). Her second book is entitled Volo in ombra (2010). As a
translator she has edited several editions of German authors, including
that of Klemperer's diaries. For Ibis, she has been the editor of the works
bt Wilhelm, Mühlenweg, Dorn and Zweig. Anna Ruchat is also professor
at the school for interpreters and translators in Milan.
Maria Sepa
Milano downtown
Novel
Piero Manni editore
Forthcoming September 2013
184 pages
€ 14,00
ISBN 978-88-6266-501-8
The lives of Giuseppe, Caterina, Corrado and Marta intersect, in their works and loves,
in the background of Milan, a city that is a character in itself. The crossroad of
infidelities, children, elegant houses and society parties is a small bar owned by an elderly
widower who keep it open all night so as not to be alone, and where the characters
between a breakfast or a drink tell their stories.
A novel in which each character strongly emerges with his/her feelings- as in the
tradition of the best North American literature – a new voice in the Italian literary
scene.
“Milano centro, una sera d’inverno. Una pioggerella gelida e quasi impercettibile cade sulla città
sfocando i contorni dei palazzi, soprattutto ai piani alti, stemperando e mescolando le luci gialle e
blu-grigiastre che provengono dalle finestre o dalle rade automobili, e quelle argentate dei
lampioni. In mezzo al viale una fila di alberi con i nudi rami neri storti disegna un fitto reticolato
nel cielo scuro.”
Maria Sepa, born in 1953, lives in Milan and in the United
States, where she taught at various universities. She writes for
the book review column of "Internazionale", translates for the
"Corriere della Sera" and is literary scout for Rizzoli, Maria
Sepa is professor of Italian literature at IES (Institute for the
International Education).
Alberto Prunetti
ASBESTOS
A working class story
AMIANTO
Una storia operaia
Agenzia X
Pages: 160
Price: e 13,00
ISBN: 978-88-95029-65-8
I’m just telling you: read this book. This novel is as huge as a house, the house missing to us,
the home we don’t have. Wu Ming
A book that is both terrible and beautiful. Pain, amusement, suffering, reflection, sharing. A
cloud of interchanging and conflicting feelings, that only a true writer is capable of condensing.
From the preface by Valerio Evangelisti
This is the story of Renato, a metalworker that grew up in the second postwar and that started
to work when he was 14 years old. A worker that melted electrodes in a storm of sparkles, just
few steps away huge petrol cisterns. A man who breathed zinc, lead and a good share of the
Mendeleev elements table, until an asbestos fibre – a material that always surrounded him –
found its way into his chest. Then, right when he stopped working, that fibre started to darken
his cells, eating his neuronal matter. A rust that he couldn’t smooth down, a brain damage that
couldn’t be sealed.
Asbestos is a wild race in memory, between of the iron industries of Piombino, Tuscany, and
the infamous Taranto’s area, from the Liguria refineries to the factories of Casale Monferrato;
between street soccer and Sunday fights along the via Aurelia. A working-class Family Sayings
featuring electric cables gone wild and sarcastic anecdotes from the workers’ world.
Popular epic meeting investigative report, a book that reopens a never-healed wound, written
by a narrative voice that reclaims attention.
Alberto Prunetti is born in Piombino in 1973. His father was a welder and
a pipe fitter. He
is the author of the novels Potassa, L’arte della fuga and Il fiorista di Perón.
Fabio Rizzoli
Almanacco dei giorni migliori
(INVERNO)
192 pages
14,00 €
Almanacco dei giorni migliori
(PRIMAVERA)
200 pages
14,00 €
Fernandel edizioni
Just two months after its release, the first volume of this “Almanac of the best days”
collected over thirty enthusiastic reviews and services in print, radio, TV and the web,
and was almost immediately reprinted. Now Fabio Rizzoli comes back with “Winter”,
the second season of his quartet. 91 additional very short stories, from December 21 to
March 20, characterized by his lightness and impertinent irony. Also in this volume each
story is preceded by advice of vision, listening and reading and is followed by an
exhortation
to
act.
What will the reader find in these pages? A known journalist who commits a murder, the
aberrant consequences of teleworking, Hamlet's soliloquy from the skull's point of view,
a real estate agent specializing in the sale of homes in which they occurred heinous
crimes, a corruption case among the Phoenicians, the sexual fantasies of a man riding
his exercise bike ...
Fabio Rizzoli was born in Bologna in 1974, where he lives. After working
in the field of communication and marketing, he has directed for some
years Alessio Roberti Editore, a publishing house specializing in books
on corporate training. Currently he works as a creative consultant and
ghostwriter, and writes for anumber of newspapers and magazines Il Sole
24 Ore, Repubblica, il Venerdì di Repubblica and Mucchio Selvaggio.
Andrea Scarabelli
LOTTA’S SPEED
Novel
LA VELOCITÀ DI LOTTA
Romanzo
AgenziaX
Pages: 192
Price: e 12,00
ISBN: 978-88-95029-71-9
Two generations that have learned how to do without a future
compare themselves. From a fresh new literary voice, an up-to-date
novel on young people’s condition under recession in Italy.
“I can’t see a thing, rage is dust cutting my eyes. I swear it. I’ll never work. I won’t go anywhere.
Want to live so fast that things loose their bleak outlines in the quickening.”
The meat grinder of temporary work creativity is milling the last talent stockpiles stowed by Diego,
a thirty-year-old that doesn’t want to fall in the throes of depression but has no idea how to avoid
them. Lotta (nickname for Carlotta, that in Italian means struggle), a kleptomaniac teenager with
multicoloured dyed hair, is the thunder of rebellious recklessness that tears the black clouds of
inertness apart. Lotta has to realize against who she should aim her mercurial load of energy. Diego
needs a sparkle to take his life back. But striking the loathed suburbs of provenance or the cuttingedge tertiary offices is not enough. On their way they’ll run into much more treacherous enemies:
lies broadcasted by press agencies, murderous banks, jails that hold love captive. Much further than
they ever dared to dream, they will set a media fire alight that will burn every certitude.
Adventure is no longer a game, and complications gather a maelstrom speed. A debut that is
corrosive as the early Palahniuk novels and spellbinding as a present-time Zazie in the metro, with a
writing polished up in its slightest details, run through by high-voltage electric current.
Andrea Scarabelli - born in Milan in 1983 - has published short stories,
essays and reviews on the Italian editions of “Rolling Stone” and “GQ” and on
the newspaper “il manifesto”.
This is his first novel.
Paolo Pasi
Il sabotatore di campane
Edizioni Spartaco – 2013
200 pages
“When he reached the church, he was surprised to admire the bare
superiority of that ancient building, maybe the only one in the village.
The presence of living men was still perceivable. Hypocrisy was in the
symbols. The stocky bell tower soared towards the sky with a clunky
leap… it was too clung to the foundations to evoke the ascent spirit”.
The mayor and his council members are worried: their population declines and they will risk to lose
their power if the village is downgraded to a mountain community hamlet. But an anarchic clockmaker
will spotlight Roccapelata. He travels to switch off God's voice in remembrance of a forgotten
massacre. But this time, he is discovered by the parish priest who, after a scuffle, falls down the stairs
and dies. The anarchist gives himself up. But no one believes him. All the inhabitants go to Astolfo
Carugis, the ambitious magistrate who coordinates the investigation. They all take responsibility for
what happened just to gain popularity. So the aspiring perpetrators draw the media attention on the
dying village. Gaetano will have to go back to his old memories to escape madness, a journey that, from
the early 70s, has brought him to the last bell tower and to that fatal, senseless epilogue. Thanks to the
rewriting of his memories he will find all the answers he needs, and among these Emma occupies a
special place. A grotesque and black story about a fleeing utopia and an illusory reality.
PAOLO PASI (1963, Milan) is a RAI TV reporter and a writer. He has won the
Ilaria Alpi TV award and the Giallomilanese Literary Award. In 2000, he
published his first short story collection Ultimi messaggi dalla città (preface by
Dan Fante). In 2009, for Edizioni Spartaco he published the novel Memorie di
un sognatore abusivo, widely appreciated by the press and in 2011 the short
story collection E il cane parlante disse bang. Paolo Pasi is also a guitarist and a
composer: he has written lyrics and music of the nine songs of his CD Fuori
dagli schemi. He is a member of the panel for the Piero Ciampi Music Award.
Memorie di un sognatore abusivo
E il cane parlante disse bang
Per segnare bisogna tirare in porta
Vito Faenza
L’isola dei fiori di cappero
Edizioni Spartaco 2013
120 pages
“On coming out of school, just entered the car, she told Him: «I
don't want to see you any more. I don't want to continue…». She
used big words for a small, insignificant story. Anna thought she
could easily put an end to their relationship, without problems.
But His gaze became cruel. For some endless moments He told
nothing, not a word. Suddenly He speeded up and drove at full
speed for kilometers. Then he stopped in a country road. He turned
towards her and held a gun on her stomach: «I'll kill you»”.
Anna was only 13 when the boss' son noticed her. Attracted by his powerful cars, by his
presents and by the respect commanded, she accepts his attentions. But this mistake
turns into a heavy chain that only a young law student, Giovanni, will be able to break. A
crime news inspires a passionate love story told by an attentive observer of the world of
gangsters- The plot, based on a true story, describes what happens in Southern, and
sometimes, in the whole Italy. Corrupt politicians, Camorra creeping in the corridors of
power, clan wars, attacks and murders, fear choking the voice of those who are too weak
to rebel. And then law, that is hardly able to restore order and that sometimes has to
overdo to obtain a partial justice. No heroes. No winners. Only a struggle to survive the
others.
VITO FAENZA (1948), journalist and essayist. He has worked for l'Unità,
Panorama, Il messaggero. He contributes to the radio agency Area and to the press
agency Agi. He has been working for Corriere del Mezzogiorno/Corriere della
Sera since 2000. Faenza has written many essays on organized crime and national
and international terrorism. From 2004 to 2010 he was the secretary of the Camorra
and Illegality Observatory and editor of its monthly bulletin.
• «L'isola dei fiori di cappero” (The island of caper flowers) by Vito Faenza is an enthralling novel.
An extraordinary story, suspended between hope and reality; between crime news and “neurotic”
storyline as those by Agatha Christie, that enchants the reader from the first line to the last one» (La
Repubblica).
Attilio Coco
Ho una storia per te
175 pages
«Attilio Coco writes an enthralling novel showing that friendship can
weave a story » (Sonia Oloferni, la Repubblica)
«Attilio Coco's novel is a graceful fresco of a period that Italy has not
forgotten yet» (Le Monde Diplomatique)
Which eyes has the past got? It has got those of Duilio Foresti, 80 years, an ex-projectionist of a
neighbourhood cinema, nom de guerre Wolf. But also those of a police officer, Amedeo Biagianti,
victim of a partisans' ambush. Their eyes meet a few seconds after the shot that binds their destinies.
Duilio's life crystallizes in that moment. Now his thirty-year friendship with the fifty-year-old writer
Pietro Mattei is shaken by that news that seems to come from one of many novels about Resistance
that he has studied. But this is a different story, this is «life… that bare, grievous, painful and wonderful
life that writing sometimes gathers but against which it often protects».
I've got a Story for You is a touching novel dealing with a crucial period in Italian history, a private
narration that can unveil unexpected destinies and can link together the story of a friendship and that
one of an entire nation. And finally the torch passes on from a generation to another to let the truth
become tale «in this time so annoyed with memory, in this Country that risks to forget the certainties
offered by History».
ATTILIO COCO (1958, Basilicata) is a high school Italian and History teacher
and a film critic. He lives and works in Rome. He has been interested in film critics
since the early nineties, writing for the Giornale di Napoli and for the magazine
Segnocinema. He has published some essays on Pier Paolo Pasolini and the films
never shot by the Italian director, the Italian cinema of the nineties, Clint
Eastwood's acting strategies, American television series, the relationship between
Italian cinema and country world.
He is also a teacher at Mim (Master dell'immaginario) of Morris, Casini&Partners in Rome. He has
published Sguardi d'autore. Visioni e immagini cinematografiche della Basilicata (Pianeta Libro
Editore 2000) about Francesco Rosi's and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Southern Italy cinema. He is the author
of the essay La passione di Cristo ovvero lo Spazio e il Tempo della Visione appeared in Il cinema di
Mel Gibson, edited by Fabio Zanello (Edizioni Il Foglio 2004). He has contributed to the 12th volume
of Storia del cinema italiano, edited by Flavio De Bernardinis (Marsilio - Edizioni di Bianco & Nero
2009). He has got a personal blog (www.attiliococo.blogspot.com) where he talks about books and his
experience as a reader.
Maurizio de Giovanni
Gli altri fantasmi
72 pages
“I walk for hours, under rain or sun, cold or heat. I walk through
roads that I don't know, brushing by hurried people, laden with
packages and thoughts, and I can't believe that they don't understand,
that they don't stop in front of me, their hand on the mouth, their
eyes wide open on the abyss of my suffering. But is it not clear in my
gaze? Is it not clear in my features, in my dirty hair, in my wrongly
bottomed up shirt? In my neglected beard, in my bags under the eyes,
in my untied shoes?”
In the detective novels written by Maurizio de Giovanni, the spirits reveal the last moments of the lives
of killed men. In the collection Gli altri fantasmi (The other ghosts), written for theatre, these
presences prevail and mingle with the real characters. They are all tormented souls, the souls of a town.
«This is Naples - de Giovanni says -: millions of people in a very small area, each one with their own
memories, their own nearest and dearest, their stubborn desire to survive everything, even themselves».
The director Francesco Saponaro says that «in this trilogy about suspension between life and death
there is the town, with its desires and its unhealed wounds». You can chance upon a barefoot little girl
and her big eyes that don't shed tears, who runs through the alleys of the Spanish quarter in the early
1900's, and who sees her mother's phantom in an Our Lady's face: in La canzone di Filomena, de
Giovanni's prose becomes poetry of pain. In Storia di Papo e Bimbomio, a strong, painful short story,
defined infamous by the actor Tony Laudadio, a father, through the pupils of an old blind man, recalls
all his sufferings, from the disease to the death of his son. La casa è il mio regno produces a bitter
smile and winks at an Eduardo de Filippo's coffee, one of the great masters of Italian theatre. This
time, the main character is the lethal poison of hate that makes a man and a woman unhappy but close
for eternity.
MAURIZIO DE GIOVANNI was born in 1958 in Naples, where he lives and
works. He started writing in 2005 when he also won a literary contest for up-andcoming detective-story writers with a short story whose main character is the
police commissioner Ricciardi. Ricciardi's novels, published by Einaudi Stile
Libero, are translated in Germany, Spain, France, England and USA. In 2012, his
Il metodo del coccodrillo was published by Mondadori.
He has also written short stories about football and in particular about Napoli Football Club, of which
he is a keen supporter. The anthology Per segnare bisogna tirare in porta published by Edizioni
Spartaco, includes the short story La palla del Negro that deals with the legendary goal scored by
Diego Armando Maradona.
Alessandro Bresolin
Gesti Convulsi
144 pages
“Christian lent over the record player and laid a long-playing record on
the turntable. The speakers started croaking some rough new wave
sounds.
«Do you remember?».
«Of course. Give me the sleeve».
It unleashed an avalanche of memories… that was a piece by their
group, the Convulsive Gestures”.
An imaginary punk-new wave band of the 80s is the thread that connects the stories of
five young men. What has become of them? How are they today? Love and jealousy,
wealth and feeling of emptiness, great ambitions and wicked revenges: five stories
representing an entire generation and society on the whole. Against the backdrop, a
diverse district between Veneto and Lombardy: a town with its nice old centre,
surrounded by valleys and mountain villages, but also by wide flat suburbs.
There is Denis, with his “white night” watching over his dead father; Gianni, who loses
his head over a pc monitor and a woman's skirt; Christian, a talented sculptor, who sells
hallucinogenic mushrooms; Federico, divided between love and conformism; Ilario, a
spoilt and wealthy cyclist, who is blackmailed. And what if “no future” had become their
future? Life is unpredictable…
ALESSANDRO BRESOLIN (1970) is a writer, an essayist and a translator. For
Edizioni Spartaco, he has edited the Ignazio Silone's essays collection Le cose
per cui mi batto and he has translated the novels Ambizione nel deserto by
Albert Cossery, La principessa del deserto di mezzo by Hamid Skif, Ammazza
un bastardo! and La strega mascherata by Colonel Durruti, Il sangue di
Fatima by Armand Julia. His firts novel, La cirrosi apatica, was published by
Editrice Zona in 2008. He has also worked for Lo Straniero, Rai Radio3, Il
Manifesto, Carmillaonline.
“If we talked about rounds, building speculation, politics and thievishness, adultery, drugs, doping,
racism, immigration, alcoholism, families and economic crisis, trash TV, we would find a lot of
different novels of social criticism. But all these themes can be found in Gesti Convulsi (Convulsive
Gestures), a sort of fresco of the life of five young men in today's Veneto” (Fahrenheit RAI Radio3)

Italian Fiction Fall 2013

Transcription

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