2024-07-04 23:25:06
OfLUCA ZANINI
Abruzzo writer wins with Einaudi’s novel (16th win). In second place “Winter” by Voltolini. Chiara Valerio third, then Romagnolo, Di Paolo, Giartosio
“I promise I will use my character and my mouth to defend the rights that my generation of women fought so hard for and which today I find myself convinced is no longer clear”: Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s first words are for women. The author from Abruzzo spoke passionately from the stage of the Nymphaeum of the Villa Giulia, in Rome, where he had just been announced. Winner of the 2024 Strega Prize with the novel A fragile age (Einaudi). « I am grateful to the Bellonci Foundation and Amici della Domenica, my travel companions, with whom I already had a relationship – says the Abruzzo writer -, my publisher as a group, because writing is a very solitary act but the book as the final product is the result of team work done with great work and great passion.”
An almost forgotten crime: two girls killed in a forest. A student shuts himself down after the devastating experience of the Covid lockdown and an attack he suffered on the street. And then an Apennine village, paralyzed by indifference and silence, which spontaneously gathers in the protection of the mountain, against domestic observation. Femicides, the psychological epidemic, the environment: they are three themes that support the plot of the novel won the 78th edition of the Strega Prize:A fragile age.
Con 189 votes out of 644, the Abruzzo writer who took the literary world in 2017 withThe Arminuta (Einaudi, translated into more than 30 countries; Campiello Prize, Napoli Prize and Alassio Prize) beat 5 other contestants, breaking away from Dario Voltolini, too Winter (Ship of Theseus, 143 favorites) and Chiara Valerio, who has entered the sextuplet with her Who speaks and who is silent (Seller, 138 votes). All three are considered likely to win, with the two female writers being heavy favourites. The expected victory given that already entering the sixth, with 248 votes, Di Pietrantonio has been the book with the most votes, as well as winning the Strega Giovani 2024 the day before announcing the finalists in Benevento.
They followed in the position defined by the vote of 644 eligible voters (of 700, 92%), Raffaella Romagnolo inclGlobal Affairs(Mondadori), 83 votes; Paolo Di Paolo also A novel without people(Feltrinelli), 66 votes; and Tommaso Giartosio as well Autobiogrammatics(less fax), 25 votes.
The reading took a little longer than usual, given that this year we also did a live reading: the last hundred votes were checked one by one until the winning book was announced, which took place on Wednesday 4 July.in the garden of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, in Rome, during the evening hosted by Geppi Cucciari and Pino Strabioli, with a heavy absence: of the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano who, after the boos at the Taormina Festival and the controversial notice for his unfortunate exit at the end of 2023 (on 2023 end) books not read: those of Strega) lost the final evening.
In the audience: supporters, representatives of libraries, journalists and technicians of live broadcasting on Raitre, but not all Amici della Domenica (now has become 400 entitled to vote for Strega ), some of which are recent. days have argued for the reduction of points which would have led to the elimination of their part from the grand final. The first time, within living memory, since 1953, i.e. since the last work of the famous literary recognition took place in Villa Giulia. In fact, due to the issues of space and the maximum capacity of the central garden (600 people) where the awards ceremony was held, the director of the Bellonci Foundation himself, Giovanni Solimine, wrote to the Friends to limit the “infiltrators” : friends. of friends (of Sunday) who for a year had been competing to get a license to enter what they considered more of a celebration of Roman high society than a cultural event.
Di Pietrantonio’s beautiful book navigates between the doubts and weaknesses of the protagonists, while also showing the great strength of some of them: “I want to underline – explains the author – the importance of awareness, of recognizing the individual’s fragility as something that is more generally fragility. which affects all of us. Only when you know about it can it become a strong point.”
As for the fragile age, it is not just one: «The fragility in the titles is expressed in the units but I myself was surprised when writing the book about the number of questions (to myself) from the writings to make space for the fragility. of each – explains Di Pietrantonio – in the end it can be “fragile ages”, so the discovery is that every phase of our life exposes us to fall, to pain… Especially the young characters in this book, Amanda’s daughter, but the girls killed for an easy trip in the mountains, in a vulnerable change to the elderly they discover that their time that they are open to the world, to life, to others is not safe; that he may stumble and even die.”
Two Abruzzo Strega winners in two consecutive editions: also Ada D’Adamo, who died on April 1 April 2023 before the announcement for her Come on (Elliot), was born in Abruzzo. And the novel by Di Pietrantonio is set in Abruzzo, who has entered the final in Strega in 2021 with South Village(Einaudi). For Einaudi this is the 16th victory in Strega: the last one is in 2022 as well Foreign citizensby Mario Desiati.
A fragile age It is a book that fascinates and disconcerts at the same time. Talk about the tangle of feelings and memories. Shocked by the heroism of the killer and by the self-isolation determined by the daughter of the protagonist who escaped – like many other young people damaged if not shocked by the experience of isolation from Covid – from the big city where she studied and ran to his mother and father’s house on the top of the mountain. Locked in a room, without books or necessities: the only contact with the world before, the cell phone. And this book, as bitter and harsh as the shepherds who carried it, may be the author’s last novel. “When I started writing – announced Di Pietrantonio interview with the Turin edition of “Corriere della Sera” — I was almost fifty. And I’m a little upset about it. If I had more courage I would have written ten novels. Instead this is the fifth, and sometimes I think it will be the last.”
In addition to Amici della Domenica, the vote for this edition includes 245 votes presented by Italian and foreign scholars, translators and intellectuals selected by 35 Italian cultural institutions abroad, 30 votes of strong readers selected from the world of professions and business and the 25 collective vote expressed by school, university and reading groups. The final panel was chaired – in the absence of Ada D’Adamo – by Stefano Petrocchi, director of the Maria and Goffredo Bellonci Foundation.
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