Fabio Genovesi, the ballad of “Pure Gold” – time.news

by time news

2023-06-03 15:26:39

Of PIERDOMENIC BACCALARIO

The new novel by the writer who returns to tell the sea, this time in 1492, comes out on Tuesday 6 June from Mondatori. The protagonist, Nuno, on the caravel headed for the New World

Fabio Genoese he has written a poetic and powerful book (438 pages), one of those, very rare, whose ending alone is worth reading the pages that precede it. And it opens up a new world. We are in 1492, in Palos, a marshy port in southern Spain, and if you already think you can guess why, you are not far wrong. Pure gold (Mondadori, in bookstores from 6 June) is an atypical historical novel, placed in one of those fundamental moments of Western chronology, of those that we have all memorized, where history makes a before and an after: the birth of Jesus, the French Revolution and when Christopher Columbus, precisely, discovers the ‘America.


To tell us how the West begins, after a double exergue that intertwines jazz and Kurdish poetry, it is Nuno, a half-Spanish and half-Portuguese boy (who later discovers he is neither) the son of a Jewish prostitute whom everyone calls the Widow, or the Gallega . She grows up in a small house where, after dark, sailors, merchants and notables of the city appear, while during the day she goes out into the street to write letters for those who cannot write, but have things to say, oaths to make, promises to throw into the sea or even just waiting for someone to read him the answers he has received. He is the Widow, dressed in black so as not to be bothered, who teaches Nuno to read and write, and thus gives him a special talent that he will use, as soon as he understands that writing is living, feeling, finding, taking and giving. And above all, that it’s heart stuff, how it beats and makes you breathe. And if Nuno’s mother is always dressed in black, Aunt Blanca is the exact opposite of her, and if one leaves too soon, the other will wait for him when he returns home. When Nuno is very young, both wear the yellow Jewish bow on their dress, as they were ordered to do by the very Catholic King and Queen of Spain, with the intercession of Torquemada: it is the year in which the Jews are given time until July to convert, leave Spain or risk your life.


Nuno, in his own way, chooses to leave, but chooses the sea route: He’s sixteen and a half years old and he’s sad, with a very different sadness from the one you feel when you have to say goodbye to the people you love. Her sadness is that of someone who, turning back to take a last look at her house, sees that there is no one to say goodbye. The sea is blue, huge and unknown. And on the sea there is another Gallega, a ship that has the same name as its mother (and which, don’t escape the irony, is both the nickname that around Seville is given to prostitutes, and the nickname of the Saint Maria). But that’s how it is: the ship is a person, Nuno tells us. And as such you must learn to deal with her.

It is Alonso who brings him on board with a trick. He is one of the sailors on board, the last of the last, but who needs one even more last than him. Say you’re friends with Juan, he advises, a great friend of Juan, do you understand? And Nuno, not immediately, but he understands, even if he doesn’t know who Juan is, or what a cabin boy is, or what it means to go to sea. His stomach will find out first. Then, he’ll find out everything else. Where are they going? she asks. In what direction? Let’s go die, his friend tells him, which is the phrase used by sailors to say: to glory! And on board, speaking a language of today, savory as a Netflix series, Nuno knows not only Alonso, but Domenico, who stammers, the Monkey, and Biondo, who keeps unsuspected secrets, and gradually the other men on board, the officers, the captains and, finally, the Admiral. And for each of them he has a thought, an intuition, an exclamation. Above all, from a simple hub, it will prove to be fundamental his talent for letters and the fact that he can read a nautical chart. It is he who, a few weeks after departure, first shouts «Earth! Earth!», but what he sees is not the New World, it’s just the Canary Islands. And when the three caravels stop to make the last supply Nuno understands that on his father’s side he must be half a Guancia, an inhabitant of the islands, and perhaps that is why he hears the call of the sea. And it is at this point that the novel cleverly mixes the cards: they leave, they travel, they arrive, they explore.

But Nuno is not interested in big history, they are interested the stories of the people, of the men on board, their ties and their feelings, it is interesting to know why Aunt Blanca had warned him so against falling in love. But by the time she wonders, it’s already too late. What throbs and is interesting in crossing and disembarking are not so much the facts or characters of the story, but the look that Nuno has for each of them. As in the moment in which he, incredulous, observes the landing of the Spaniards in front of the jungle in the New World, pierced by the eyes of the natives hidden in the damp and gloomy shade. On that morning out of touch and out of time, he tells us, which would change both the world and time forever, between land and sea, plants and animals, fish and birds and eyes that had never been seen or dreamed of, a of elegant gentlemen – at least according to Spanish standards – in a very scrupulous way, he starts reading aloud and signing a notarial deed. It is the act by which they take possession of an entire world. And in this supreme bureaucratic gesture there is the absurd splendor of writing and of the document, of the map that determines the world, and not its opposite. There is the infinite European arrogance of one who feels God without any doubt on his side. But, in that dense forest there is also, on Nuno, the first glimpse of a girl, who shortly thereafter will become She, She, the absolute woman, like the one envisioned by Henry Rider Haggard in the depths of another novel, in another inextricable jungle.

It is here that the full meaning of the novel begins to shine, and its title, Pure gold. Where is it, pure gold? Perhaps, Nuno tells us, in the following pages, not in large or small actions, not even in objects or possessions. It’s not a city, a mine, it’s not even that of people. Instead, it is the time you have available with them: even just three years, just three years. Just enough to load life with all the necessary meanings. And write, with the Admiral, a certain letter, which however never sent, by mistake, or bad luck, or fear, or all three of these things together. And that he could change everything.

The author

The new novel by Fabio Genovesi (Mondadori, pp. 438, euro 20) is released on Tuesday 6 June. Fabio Genovesi (1974; below) was born and lives in Forte dei Marmi (Lucca). He has published, among others, for Mondadori «Esche vive» (2011), «Chi manda le folle» (2015), «Il mare dove si nontouch» (2017), «I will fall, dreaming of flying» (2020). Also «Death of the Marbles» (Laterza, 2012), «All first on the finish line of my heart» (Solferino, 2019), «The giant squid» (Feltrinelli, 2021). Genovesi is the “cultural” voice of the Rai commentary at the Giro d’Italia, collaborates with the “Corriere della Sera” and with its cultural supplement, “La Lettura”. Just «la Lettura» #597 of 7 May (available in the App for smartphones and tablets) had anticipated a passage from «Pure Gold».

A month of presentations throughout Italy

The tour of “Pure gold” which brings Fabio Genovesi throughout Italy with his new novel. After yesterday’s debut in Pietrasanta (Lucca), the Tuscan writer will be tomorrow in Rovigo (as part of the Rovigoracconta festival, 5.45 pm), Wednesday 7 June in Siena (Becarelli Bookshop, 6 pm) and in Sesto Fiorentino (Ubik Bookshop, 21 hours). Then, among the various appointments scheduled, we recall 9 June in Empoli (Libreria Rinascita, 9.30 pm), 10 in Forte dei Marmi (Villa Bertelli, 6 pm), 11 in Florence (for The city of Readers, 0 am 21), the 12th in Novara (Circolo dei Lettori, 6.00 pm), the 14th in Milan (Rizzoli Bookshop, 6.30 pm), the 15th in Rome (Nuova Europa I Granai Bookshop, 6.00 pm), the 17th in Salerno (for the Salerno Literature Festival, 8pm) on the 23rd in Trieste (Lovat Library, 6.30pm), on the 27th in Turin (Circolo dei Lettori, 9pm). For the entire Fabio Genovesi tour, which will visit other Italian locations, consult the website mondadori.it.

June 3, 2023 (change June 3, 2023 | 3:25 pm)

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