Isbn world rights / fiction
Michela Murgia
THE WORLD HAS TO KNOW
Il mondo deve sapere
128 pages | 2006
novel
“An important book” DIARIO.
“Thoroughly engaging, delightful and very funny” – IL MESSAGGERO.
A novel, a comedy, an investigation. It entertains, it makes you tremble and it pisses you off. The World Has to Know is the diary of a month in a call center.
For thirty uninterminable days, the author sold vacuum cleaners on the phone to thousands of housewives for Kirby, an American multinational. In the meantime, she observed the company’s techniques of persuasion and punishment, describing a working model halfway between Berlusconism and Scientology. The World Has to Knowdescribes temporary work in a way which is corrosive, pungent, full of grace and of imaginativeness — miraculously making you laugh. Until you cry.
Michela Murgia (1972) was born in Cabras, Oristano. After her theological studies, she became a webmaster, manager, and an operator in a call center. The World Has to Know has recently become a movie (“Tutta la vita davanti” by the Italian film director Paolo Virzì) and a theatrical pièce by Teresa Saponangelo. Michela Murgia has written also Viaggio in Sardegna, Einaudi, 2008 and Accabadora, Einaudi 2009.
This is her first novel.
Gioia Guerzoni (edited by)
INDIA - Five stories, six reports, three comics
India. Cinque storie, sei reportage, tre fumetti
192 pages | 2008
anthology
“Eleven young writers offer an excellent synthesis of the many Indian faces” – IL MESSAGGERO.
Rights sold to
Tranquebar Press (INDIA)
Eleven stories and three comics explain the life of the new Indian monster-cities, of the futuristic directional centers of Delhi and of the populous shanty towns of Mumbai. Places of thousands of years of history projected into a hyper-technological and hyper-consumeristic future far from the cloying exoticisms and Bollywood clichés.
India brings together the voices of young writers, artists, and directors committed to confronting themselves with the weight of tradition, the drifting of progress and capitalism, the endemic poverty, and the difficult coexistence among the religions. The best of a generation “returned home” after the classic period abroad in the West; those who have decided to stay and understand. Without becoming blinded by the obvious “Shining India” mirage.
Eleven writers, born in (or around) the seventies: Altaf Tyrewala, Mridula Koshy, Tishani Doshi, Sonia Faleiro, Chandrahas Choudhury, Samrat Choudhury, Annie Zaidi, Palash Krishna Mehrotra, Anindya Roy, Smriti Nevatia and comics by Sarnath Banerjee.
Various Authors
SINGAPORE - Sixteen stories from far Asia
Singapore. Sedici racconti dall’Asia estrema
176 pages | 2006
anthology
“An interesting testimony of the local literary production, of its ability of being modern in a relaxed way as well as a surpising detector of reality” – DIARIO.
Sixteen young authors share their perspective on what it means to live in and around Singapore, to be in the most exciting and dangerous social laboratory in the planet and to be able to watch Europe and the United States from the privileged point of view of those who run ahead of it. Stories told in images, paced to the time of cinematographic editing and connected to an Asian nouvelle vogue which has been winning prizes for years at the most important festivals in the world.
And where there’s good cinema, there’s good literature. Modernity is a fleeting concept, difficult to bring into focus when we look at it too closely.
Reading the sixteen short stories of Singapore, one has the feeling of being in the immediate future, of knowing a priori how personal and sentimental relationships as well as the world of work will be in fifteen years.
Biagio Autieri
THE UNUSUAL RUMBA
L’insolita rumba
A neo-melodic novel
115 pages | 2008
novel
“A very effective publishing operation to think about the disparities of the contemporary society” – REPUBBLICA XL.
The protagonists of this novel are those who scare you a bit on te street, on the bus, seated on the hood of your car. They’re called Totò, Fredo, Ciccio, Samir, and together they make up The Unusual Rumba, a neo-melodic band which plays at weddings, parties for the elderly and public riots. They started in Naples, or in Algeria, and they have never left their quarter of the city, have never taken a train, and don’t have money to buy a cellphone. Behind boys like these are love stories which are as light as Truffaut and have the sweet look and respectfulness of Pasolini. The Unusual Rumba is the incredible story of the Italian suburbs, recorded live without any sense of disenchantment or superiority; the portrait of lives worthly of being lived; rich in adventures and opportunities that we have stopped experiencing for some time now.
Biagio Autieri was born in Cosenza. He lives in Milan, where he works with youth on the streets. The Unusual Rumba is his first novel.
Ilaria Bernardini
THE END OF LOVE
La fine dell’amore
250 pages | 2006
short stories
“A beautiful book, a collection of stories that compliment one another in turn” – ROLLING STONE.
“A collection of thirteen melancholic and delicate stories on birth, death and the impossibility and effort of emotion ” – FLAIR.
«The end of love has to do with the bottom of the white mugs, which slowly, slowly become dark and stained. It has to do with the glasses which move from six to four and it also has to do with the cheap
kitchen which cannot last for more than two years because it begins to fall apart and one can see that it is made of nothing. All plastic and laminated - and you wanted to pretend it was made of wood and steel - now that you can understand why it cost so little: it is not able to make the love last or to make its fake parts last. It is cannot remain as in the photo while you recall how it was, perfect on the hundred page catologue, with the fluorescent lights and the blue bowls.» Thirteen sharp short stories by a young writer. Something new about love.
Ilaria Bernardini was born in 1977 in Milan. Graduated in Philosophy, she writes for Linus and for Rolling Stone. In 2005, she published It is nothing (Baldini Castoldi Dalai). Recently, she has published The Superheroes (Bompiani), 2009.
Omar Di Monopoli
OF MEN AND DOGS
Uomini e Cani
240 pages | 2007
novel
Winner of the Edoardo Kihlgren Opera Prima 2008
“Set in a very authentic South of Italy, Of men and Dogs is a brilliant novel that menages to tell all the disgust of some abandoned Italian suburbs” – LA REPUBBLICA
“A powerful debut set in the noir fulldepth of Italy” – DIARIO
Tense as a thriller, baroque as a cathedral, violent as a pitbull’s bite, Of Men and Dogs is a furious ride into the black heart of the South. In a Salento, light years away from the one of the postcards, the municipality of Languore plans to transform a salt mine into a natural park. And the events are put into motion.
The Mayor is young and optimistic, Milena beautiful and scared. Nico has lost everything except himself. Don Tttta Scarciglia manages and corrupts. The Minghellas raise fighting dogs and children and Pietro Lu Sorgi, the hermit, annihilates everybody who invades his territory. A choral Greek tragedy, an irresistible western.
The ancient equilibrium is broken. The blood begins to fatten up the land.
Omar Di Monopoli
IRON AND FIRE
Ferro e fuoco
192 pages | 2008
novel
“A story with a cinematic rythm. This is the perfect subject for a «Pomodori Western»” – CORRIERE DEL MEZZOGIORNO
A trail of violence hits the Gargano region (set in the southern part of Italy). An army of new slaves fights to survive in immense tomato plantations. Billiard Ball is their rampant leader, with a terribile mother trailing behind him. Young Andrej and the beautiful Mariehla are only two pawns in an atrocious game. The Pelican, the uncontested lord of the land, reigns over all of them. Then the fire arrives razing it all to the ground. But in the meantime someone has managed to escape: Kazin, injustly accused, takes a hostage and escapes to the North, while four Apocalypse knights tread hard on his heels. There will be a showdown. The vibrant western tension of Of Men and Dogs returns in a novel which is equally ruthless but even more actual.
Omar Di Monopoli (1971) lives and works in Manduria, Apulia. He has written the screenplay for The Hunt, produced by Edoardo Winspeare. With Isbn he has published Of Men and Dogs and Iron and Fire.
Michele Vaccari
ITALIAN FICTION
Italian fiction
213 pages | 2007
novel
“Michele Vaccari offers a formation ballad which is politic, cultured and
prepared. It is a middle way between Van Sant and Arbasino. The story
is told with a decomposed language, fresh and cool” – ROLLING STONE
Violent and upsetting as a fight between drunks, acute and ironic as a squabble between hairdressers. During the Vigasio (Verona) Carnival, Guido, a hardcore Brescian warrior, takes Helen - the best Italian cosplayer - hostage. It is the beginning of an ‘escape of love’ through Europe; pursued by the police, Helen’s father, and Mal of The Primitives. A polymorphous on the road story à la “Sesso e Fuga con l’Ostaggio” but with way more gel in the hair. From the outermost Italian province to the Scandinavian forests, a long journey to find Appearence, the rave that never ends, the place where one can freely be who he/she is not.
Michele Vaccari was born in Genoa in 1980. He is the editorial coordinator for the VerdeNero project for Edizioni Ambiente. He contributed to the collection Gli Intemperanti and he is the author of the biography on Aleister Crowley.
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