Author of fiction and theater from Trieste, in his debut novel “Capriole uphill” he recounted his life between alcohol, prison and asylum. With the stories of “Mandami a dire” he won the Campiello prize in 2005, on a par with Antonio Scurati
Marginalization, mental illness, alcoholism, the recluse or stray existence of characters on the edge of society and of life itself. Pino Roveredo (below, photo by Luigi Costantini/Ap), writer from Trieste who died yesterday at the age of 69 after a long illness, recounted with the authenticity given by lived experience the territories of those who, «rocking on the seesaw of time , toils the day to earn the night». Born to deaf-mute and very poor parents in post-war Trieste, 1954, Roveredo had spent his childhood years in boarding school, in a regime of abuse and mistreatment, which, after the escape, was followed by alcoholism, prison and then the asylum. In that experience the first painful novel released in 1996 by Lindt and then published had taken root from Elisabetta Sgarbi’s Bompiani, Somersaults uphill, which gave him a certain notoriety and the possibility of a second season of life, dominated by writing.
That debut (although, Claudio Magris wrote, «rather than making Roveredo’s debut, he entered forcefully into literature»), were followed by Dancing with Ceciliaa journey in the shadows of a ninety-year-old who spent 60 years in a psychiatric hospital where she remained even when, with the Basaglia reform, her closed universe opened up. e «Send me to say» with which, in 2005, he won the Campiello Prize, tied with Antonio Scurati on an all-Bompiani podium who remembered him yesterday as well as “for his inspired pen, for his moral caliber”.
It was Roveredo himself who explained the meaning of a path marked by a different relationship with pain: first suffering as a reason to continue on the path of self-destruction, then a reason for living. After Tell me
which collects fourteen stories, some lightning-fast, of suffering and hope, in which the balance of style avoids any pathetic excess, Roveredo has written a lot – short stories, novels and theatrical texts – not always with the same dry inspiration of the beginnings, but creating a his space in the literary world, making his voice heard and listened to also in the society dynamics (he was a volunteer, street worker, educator and, from 2014 to 2018, guarantor for the rights of prisoners in Friuli Venezia Giulia) and politics (in 2021 he was a candidate for municipal councilor in Trieste, with a civic list).
In the books following Tell meall published by Bompiani, Roveredo has continued to frequent, with different registers, the territories of the autobiography, the themes of marginalization and the evil of living. Come in characterwhere a mother who has left behind a difficult past is faced with her child’s drug addiction, or as in M
my father voted for Berlinguer
, a sort of letter to the worker-shoemaker parent, who disappeared in 1981, including, even in his weaknesses, after his death. Or again as in the stories of Chew and spit, title borrowed from a song by another great voice of the excluded, Fabrizio De Andrè. the latest novel,The boys of via Pascoli
is dedicated to younger readers and reinvents the story of Pino, caught in a sack by the master of the universe and sent with his twin brother Rino to Trieste, in the “gallery of silence”, in a humble house where you get by with bread, potatoes and fantasy, and where, together with affection, the language of signs reigns, while noise rages outside.
January 21, 2023 (change January 21, 2023 | 5:39 pm)
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