“FRIDAY RE-VERSO” “Today is my birthday. Everyone come and taste my sautéed pork liver.” When we reached page 50 we wanted to beat up whoever recommended this reading to us; by page 135 we had already cried three times; once we finished the book we were looking for the author’s complete bibliography. (Note to the reader: “The City That Doesn’t Exist” was released in recent days by Feltrinelli.) Yu Hua has mastered the ancient art of...
“There is no Italian who manages to completely escape the mistletoe of opportunism.” Book son of the time in which it was written (1995), and of a different, higher, morality and political conscience of the Italian intelligentsia. Reading it today, one greatly appreciates the analysis of the past, and the one that is in some parts incorrect on the future, but not due to the demerit of the author, but rather to the demerit of...
The books chosen by Andrea Salonia This review is available only in the original language _________________________________________________________________________ Difficile leggere un romanzo tanto acuto, sardonico, crudele e divertente al tempo stesso. Soprattutto pensando che è stato lì per un certo qual tempo, da qualche parte in una libreria grande o piccola, accolto su uno scaffale o appoggiato su un espositore, più o meno in generosa mostra, e tutto ciò da almeno trent’anni nella nostra bella Italia. Senza che...
“You should do as if the year ends every day. As if it ran out every hour. Every minutes. Every minute you should think that the year is about to end.” Uto Drodemberg. The name alone is enough to draw the charm of the protagonist of the book. An angular character, perhaps partly childish in some attitudes, but of which it is really difficult not to fall in love with the first pages already. Ironic,...
“There is no image in the world where you don’t appear. You are always there.” The book is a collection of six stories. Six stories of hearts and memories. Six wandering souls, each with a past too heavy to bear, a present to sink into and a future to draw. Three short stories are written in the male first person, and three in the female, demonstrating the versatility of the writer and her profound humanity....
“History is a fish inside an aquarium, it comes and goes under your nose without you ever catching it. You can only imagine about how it could once, but nothing else, nothing else…” Set in the 30s of the last century, with the noises of the Second World War, first weak and then louder and louder, the book deals with the events of a family of the Italian-Swiss upper middle class. In the muffled atmosphere...
