“Diving into the pool reminds me of the sensation of being wrapped […], a tender embrace that consoles me at the end of a tiring day.” You see the cover of a book, you understand roughly what the book might be about, and then you put it back on the shelf, because you think the topic is not interesting. This is what usually happens with books written by athletes, especially if they are about sports...
“And if no one tells me a story tonight, I know that one day, when I have all the words I need, I’ll tell them to myself.” Finalist of the XXVI edition of the Edoardo Kihlgren Opera Prima Literary Prize, the title does not lie: in the book there are fables and it talks about communism. We are in Albania, between the 80s and 90s, under the communist regime of Hoxa. Said like that, one...
“Restoring memory to news makes them less orphaned.” A hymn to the common good, to always acting thinking that every single choice in our daily life can have a positive impact on the community. Being honest with ourselves before others, acting based on what was once called common sense. Well, if we had to describe the book in a few words, they could only be these. In a double-track story, Sigfrido Ranucci offers us key...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Don’t let anyone convince you that no one is interested in ideas.” Have you ever seen “Three on the Run”? It’s a 1989 film starring Nick Nolte and Martin Short. Not many people have seen it, but we kept thinking about it while reading. In the film, an absurd trio consisting of a former bank robber just out of prison, a shabby thief who chooses him as a hostage, and his very quiet little...
“I grew up with my mother, not with my father.” Finalist of the XXVI edition of the Edoardo Kihlgren Opera Prima Literary Prize, the text is a family story, in which the author goes fishing in the lake of his dearest memories, what he remembers and what he thought he didn’t remember, to tell the story of his life up to now, and the internal dynamics between his parents and then those with his brothers...
“The commuter’s journey, well, it’s not a journey. It’s three dots in brackets.” We won’t beat around the bush in this review: if you’re here, it’s because you’re looking for a good book, one that can not only keep you company, but that can also really give you something more. We’re talking about Björn Larsson’s Philosophy of the Commuter, which at first glance is aimed only at a certain type of reader: a commuter who...
“In Milan everything plays and everyone plays something.” A nice and in its own way captivating idea, that of the author to describe his city, Milan, through the five senses that man has: a clear perception of how the city is felt and envelops each person, even before it can be thought; an observation so true in a city where everyone is passing through life. In fact, as an old adage says, Milan is for...
“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Then I burst into tears. Then one always bursts into tears, I thought.” Telling life by talking about death: this is what Aglaja Veteranyi does for one hundred and twenty-nine poignant, poetic pages. The life of circus performers has always had a contradictory charm that combines the freedom of wandering with the lability of relationships; a life made of magic tricks and escapes, amazements and disappearances. Different rules, a twirling in space and time...
“They had chased and waited for each other, only to meet again and again.” Let’s go back in time. Catania in the late 1930s, with fascism in power, winds of war ready to become a storm, cowardice and meanness tacitly disguised as nobility of soul and rectitude. Here two boys in their early twenties, Salvatore (known as Sasà) and Michele, meet one night on a beach and fall in love. A difficult love because the...
“My family can be said to have never existed as such.” A collection of short stories published posthumously, in which Piero Chiara’s lovers find all the contents of his narrative style: Lake Maggiore, the gossips of the village, the fixed time of provincial life, the lost memory, the cynicism of the human being. Starting from the twenties of the last century, the events reported arrive up to the very early eighties, to ideally identify with...
