The Strega Prize and its fateful dozens

Protect an already extinct canon or break down the mediocrity of self-publishing? These are the dilemmas that have gripped the establishment of the seventy-eighth edition. The two new criteria introduced, in fact, reject self-promotion by the Friends of Sunday themselves, as well as the participation of self-publications in the dispute. If it happened that someone close to Premio Strega attempted to exploit the advantageous position for himself, and he will no longer be allowed to do so, the intention to protect editorial work at all levels to re-establish a hierarchical literary chain, based on professionalism of those who work within publishing houses. However, the Italian-style windmills and the usual picturesque inconsistencies remain: with the liberalization of ISBN codes and the spread of pervasive entities like Amazon, anyone can purchase an identifier for their manuscript. Just pay. And, equally, just as many publishers don’t even leaf through the drafts in progress, always in exchange for the fee paid by the presumed author for publication.

Narrative

Among the eighty-two works proposed this year by the Amici della Domenica, the steering committee of the liqueur prize has chosen the following: Sonia Aggio with In the emperor’s room (Fazi), Adrián N. Well done with Adelaide (Nutriments), Paolo Di Paolo with Novel without humans (Feltrinelli), Donatella Di Pietrantonio with The fragile age (Einaudi), Tommaso Giartosio with Autobiogrammatica (minimum fax), Antonella Lattanzi with Things that aren’t told (Einaudi), Valentina Mira with On the same side you will find me (SEM), Melissa Panarello with History of my money (Bompiani), Daniele Rielli with The invisible fire. Human story of a natural disaster (Rizzoli), Raffaella Romagnolo with Fixing the universe (Mondadori), Chiara Valerio with Who says and who is silent (Sellerio) and Dario Voltolini with Winter (The ship of Theseus). It would seem, at least according to President Mazzucco, that among the experimental writings valorised there is a clear desire to resist the arrogance of the market, although the horizontal micro-biographism, with its rapid pace and a nod to television seriality, continues to arouse controversy among critics.

European

Faced with the social imbalances and the prevarications disguised as humanitarian missions which weaken the moral strength of the West, and blood its horizon, in the choice of the five titles of the European Witch Prize it was not possible to ignore those who highlighted a drama that it becomes a historical, political and civil body. And the writers who consider every death in war as a failure of the contemporary have been recognized, who have recovered personal memory to redeem the collective one, despite the individual remaining immersed in a contradictory history, in a congeries of brutal and inhuman affairs. The five competing teams will be presented as usual at the Turin International Book Fair, between Friday 10th and Sunday 12th May; while the awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, at 6.30 pm, at the Circolo dei Lettori. Here is the international five: Shida Bazyar with At night all is silent in Tehran (Fandango Libri), translated by Lavinia Azzone; Paul Lynch with The song of the prophet (66thand2nd), translated by Riccardo Duranti; Tore Renberg with La mia Ingeborg (Fazi), translated by Margherita Podestà Heir; Neige Sinno with sad tiger (Neri Pozza), translated by Luciana Cisbani; Rosario Villajos with Phisical education (Guanda), translated by Roberta Arrigoni.

Poetry

Bibliodiversity stands out on the twelve covers that mark the second step of the Strega Poetry Award. Almost in retaliation, in fact, in the fateful dozen it is the independent publishers who dominate the monoliths who usually determine the fate of the market, dictating the law between the genres that differentiate everything that is printed in prose, in the so-called “variety” in the hands of booksellers. Alida Airaghi with How much history (My Marco), Alessandro Anil con Land of returns (Pordenonelegge – Samuele Editore), Gian Maria Annovi with Discomparse (Aragno), Daniela Attanasio with Live in the world (Vallecchi), Alessandro Baldacci with The God of Nuremberg (Pequod), Anthony Bux con Maps without a land (RPlibri), Roberto Cescon with Nature (Stampa2009), Stefano Dal Bianco with Paradiso (Garzanti), Giovanna Frene with Heredity and Extinction (Donzelli), Rosaria Lo Russo with Listen (Vydia), Tommaso Ottonieri with Cinema of spells (La Vita Felice) and Enrico Testa with Nobody’s weed (Einaudi) are the candidates from the scientific committee. And last Friday, to announce them from the wooden pulpit, Andrea Cortellessa made use of an allegorical pamphlet outside the box and outside the angelic bedlam, a True method for the selection of poets, with which to classify, for better or for worse, the name and title of the collections being read. Blessed are the excluded?

Marco Giovenale, who published the notebook in question for Edizioni Volatili, reviews around a hundred categories under which to note the volumes examined, without euphemisms or considerations of any kind: “oxidized by clichés”, “kitsch brutalists”, ” rhetoricians of goodism or bad activism”, “elderly cannibals”, “switchblade reavant-gardists”, “lyricanthropes”, “neo-futurists with a fixation on capital letters all over the paper”, but also “self-candidates for the Nobel” and “teacher thieves” they are just some of the most ruthlessly hilarious subspecies.