Strega award Archivi - Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS

Jun 3, 2023 | BOOKS, BOOKS

The Eight Mountains is both a literary and cinematic success.

Again I owe the reading to Monica and I hope that the movie will not disappoint me as it often happens when I watch movies based on books.

I heard a lot about The Eight Mountains with reference to male friendship or more precisely manly friendship.

Of course The Eight Mountains tells about mountains, as well as it tells about a Friendship of the kind we should all be privileged to experience in life.

However, the prevailing reflection that I retain after reading this book is another.

Beyond the powerful and unrelenting beauty of the mountain, I was impressed by its role within the story in the father-son relationship.

The mountain is typically silence; instead, I read it in this book as the only dialogue to patch up a deep generational and emotional incommunicability.

Sometimes we love totally, we love with a love written even in our DNA, yet we do not know how to show it.

This kind of love is blatantly obvious to those who can observe it as uninvolved spectators and yet it is hidden from the eyes of those with too close a perspective that paradoxically creates a distance.

Am I wrong?
Perhaps this view is entirely personal.

Have you read the book?
Written by Paolo Cognetti and published by Einaudi in 2016.
Strega Prize 2017.

Or have you seen the movie?
Directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van groeningen in 2021.
Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2022.
David di Donatello for best film 2023.

An old Nepalese man told me about the eight mountains …

The man picked up a stick with which he drew a circle in the ground. It came out perfect; you could tell he was used to drawing them. Then, within the circle, he drew a diameter, and then a second perpendicular to the first, and then a third and fourth along the bisectors, resulting in a wheel with eight spokes. I thought that, having to arrive at that figure, I would start from a cross, but it was typical for an Asian to start from the circle

– Have you ever seen a drawing like that? – he asked me.

– Yes, – I answered. – In the mandala.

– Right, – he said. – We say that at the center of the world is a very high mountain, Sumeru. Around Sumeru there are eight mountains and eight seas. This is the world for us.

In saying this he drew, out of the wheel, a small point for each ray, and then a small wave between each point. Eight mountains and eight seas. Finally he made a crown around the center of the wheel, which could be, I thought, the snowy summit of Sumeru. He pointed the stick at the center and concluded, -And let’s say: will the person who went around the eight mountains have learned more, or the person who made it to the top of Mount Sumeru?

In your opinion?

AND THEN WE WILL BE SAVED

Mar 25, 2023 | BOOKS

With E poi saremo salvi – And then we will be saved again I thank Monica and again I talk about the Strega Prize.

And then we will be saved is the debut novel by Alessandra Carati, published by Mondadori, winner of the Opera prima Viareggio Rèpaci prize and among the top seven finalist books for the Strega 2022 prize.

Andrea Vitali, celebrated writer from Bellano, proposed and presented the book.

The salvation told by Alessandra Carati is sought because of the war in Bosnia through an escape to Italy, but the characteristic of this novel is precisely its ability to show how being safe does not mean being saved.

And one finds oneself reflecting on roots, or perhaps better said uprooting, and how there is no place in the world where one can escape from pain.

A pain that manifests itself in different ways is that it is the only true “arbiter.”

Alessandra tells us Aida’s story in episodes, sort of like when we remember “that time.”

And in between times, life flows.

And in between times the family changes, while remaining a fixed point, at times distant, like the land of her origin.

The reflection this reading leaves me with concerns the impossibility of leaving behind pain, whatever kind it may be.

We cannot prevent pain from being part of us; we can only choose how to live with it.

Salvation, then, in this book, reconnects with another Strega Prize winner, Tutto chiede salvezza – Everything asks for salvation, the book by Daniele Mencarelli.

There are indeed many kinds of salvation at different levels.

I find these words of Pablo Neruda emblematic:
If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.

However, I am also struck by these two basically similar interpretations:

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King

The only tool that can save my life is imagination.
Alejandro Jodorowsky

Did you feel saved when?

BOG CHILD

Sep 17, 2021 | BOOKS

This book was Lorenzo’s choice.
Published by Uovonero Bog child was written by Siobhan Dowd: born in London to Irish parents.

And it is Ireland, in particular Northern Ireland, that reading leads us to discover and get to know.

The so-called “main” story takes place in 1981 and is inspired by real events in Long Kesh.

In some way, therefore, I return to talk to you about The Troubles.

In this book you can find Family, Honesty, Friendship, Hope, Sacrifice, but also surprise because very often things are not what they seem.

Siobhan Dowd was winner of the Andersen Prize in 2012, finalist for the Strega Prize and was awarded the Carnegie Medal posthumous.

… Unfortunately a cancer prevented her from continuing to write and interrupted her life at the age of 47.

Her personal story struck me a lot and as often happens to me, the feelings I feel lead me to find details that somehow find a relocation in my history and in my world.

In 1984, a year that occupies a particularly important place in my memories, Siobhan joined the PEN International, an organization that celebrates literature, defends free expression (and I emphasize this because lately it is becoming a much less obvious concept), protect writers at risk, support writers in exile, promote linguistic rights.

With the earnings and royalties from the sale of his books Siobhan wanted to give young people the opportunity to read and appreciate literature by founding The Siobhan Dowd Trust to support worthy projects.

Love for writing, love for freedom, love for kids, love for Ireland = maximum esteem.

And as for “Bog child” in Italy the title has been tranlated like this: The little girl forgotten by time… what else can these words mean?

L’ACQUA DEL LAGO NON È MAI DOLCE – LAKE WATER IS NEVER SWEET

Jul 9, 2021 | BOOKS

And here we are again talking about the Strega Prize, even if in this case missing, despite the multiplied predictions and fans in favor of the book Lake water is never sweet by Giulia Caminito Edizioni Bompiani.

Once again for this reading I want to thank Monica who after telling me her impressions told me “but I want to know what you think.”

First of all, I loved the way in which the author got rid of the dialogue / quotes formula by inserting the speeches in direct form in a single uninterrupted stream of words.

More than a lake, in fact a river, a fast flowing current, an enthralling current from which the reader allows himself to be led satisfied with a constant absence of static, which on the contrary constitutes a preponderant characteristic of the lake.

The lake water is also typically cold, and while I really admired the writing, as far as I’m concerned I couldn’t “dive.”

I read the book with that curiosity that accelerates reading, and all the while I had the feeling that I would find something obscure in the following pages, like the lake depths that leave that perennial sense of disquiet, but it was not so.

Or rather, Giulia Caminito described the wickedness in its hidden but latent presence within the human soul. Yet it is as if along with awareness, intention was also sought.

The narration in the first person never reveals the name of the main character, who will appear only as a signature to a letter, and in the same way hides the deep self, which, as much as the underwater nativity scene, lies submerged, manifesting itself only in some moments that remain suspended, logs like piers that only provide the momentum to dive.

There are never consequences, everything flows, everything proceeds in indifference.

So in the end I compare myself to the “lemons abandoned outside the gate” (quote from the book) … wondering if this was not the real intent.

I also recommend the “pro and con” evaluation by Matavitatau that leaves from the analysis of the final notes.

Reading the notes, however, my thoughts have deviated a little course to focus mainly on a theme that is very close to my heart and which leads back to the character that aroused the most empathy in me: Iris.

If you have already read, or will read the book, you will surely understand why. So I wait to know how you find lake water.

Curious coincidence: right about the lakefront of Anguillara Loredana had spoken to me, also giving me the photo of her cup of coffee that in case you find it here.

So feel free to send me your favorite cup as well whenever you want: I will be happy to share other nice trips from mug to mug …

TUTTO CHIEDE SALVEZZA – EVERYTHING ASKS FOR SALVATION

Feb 25, 2021 | BOOKS

This book after Il colibrì – The hummingbird and Febbre – Fever closes Monica’s trilogy on the Strega Awards.

Everything calls for salvation: the title itself already contains a universe of considerations, yet it takes the reader where he would not have thought he would go.

Personally in life I learned early on the intensity of the brotherhood that is born in hospital rooms, when totally unknown people find themselves in close contact and the common condition of suffering cancels the standard paths of knowledge, making sure that within a few hours you find yourself catapulted into the lives of others in a strong and in many cases indelible way.

However, I had never known this type of department, and I am grateful to Daniele Mencarelli for all that he has taught me with his book.

Never look away, never avoid asking yourself the REASON for behaviors that we do not know how to explain, because there must always be a reason, even though, in the blindness of the standard modus vivendi, it is incomprehensible to most.

At the base of it all is suffering, and even more sensitivity. Extreme, in the purest and most intense state.

A sensitivity that finds no explanation in the cynical world and that, ignored, manifests itself in immobilizing forms, or, on the contrary, violent.

I was left with the desire to know what happens after those five days, not only to Daniele, but also to all the other characters, I would like to be able to read that each of them manages to solve the biggest dilemma: life.

I would like the salvation requested to be granted.

In fact, there is no madness without justification and every gesture that ordinary and sober people consider mad involves the mystery of an unprecedented suffering that has not been grasped by men.
Alda Merini