fiction
Michela Murgia
THE WORLD HAS TO KNOW | Il mondo deve sapere
Reprint (first edition: 2006)
144 pages novel
Publication date: June 2010
updated version, with a new chapter by the author
“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 Know describes 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 (Dessì Prize, Mondello Prize, Shortlisted at Supercampiello Prize).
This is her first novel.
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Omar di Monopoli
FONZI’S LAW | La legge di Fonzi
300 pages | novel
Publication date: June 2010
Like a bad memory dating back to a violent era, Nado “Manicomio”Pentecoste is about to return to Monte Svevo: few houses built in the shade of the factories situated in Taranto and Brindisi, where once some of the cruellest Corona Unita clans could run about undisturbed. Pisso and Giordano, young car thieves capable of everything, are waiting for him, together with the town notables gang, lead by mayor Gerardo Santilli; Skùppetta, a dodgy junkyard without scruples of taking advance of his cousin Manicomio’s capture. And, above all, Giovanni, nicknamed Fonzi, is waiting for him, Pentecoste’s little brother, some sort of hermit who can awaken forgotten tensions: was it really Manicomio the one who committed a dreadful crime five years ago? And what do the new church’s undergrounds hide, a church built against the protestations because the area is subject to environmental constraints? While the town is immersed in the splendor of the annual Giostra Medievale, Manicomio’s wrath unleashes in a violent and vengeful way: blood will flow in the rendering of accounts. On the background of an archaic and sultry deep South, Omar Di Monopoli’s western set in Puglia is back with a choral tightened story where nothing is what is seems and no one is innocent.
Omar Di Monopoli (1971) lives and works in Puglia. He published for Isbn Edizioni the novels Men and Dogs (2007, Premio Kilhgren) and Iron and Fire (2008).
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Matteo Sartori
FAMILY RULES | Regole di famiglia
224 pages | May 2010
novel
Offended and confused, Pietro Keller, aged eleven, had stepped onto the stairs, with freezing hands and a panting chest. The ceilings of the old house in the woods had become dark behind his veiled eyes, and the mansion La Betulla had seemed to sink a few centimeters deeper into the wet earth under the weight of injustice, its windows and doors shaken by the painful vibration that departed from his tiny heart
Meet the Kellers: well-to-do and restless, progressive and immobile. Family Rules is an engrossing family saga, told by Matteo Sartori from an innovative and modern point of view. Two moments (1973 and 1978) in Italian history are watched through the eyes of young Pietro, nicknamed The Archivist, the last son of a sophisticated and unforgettable family, which typifies yesterday’s and today’s Italy. On the background, youthful loves and confusions, vitalism and impasse, betrayals and beatings, nostalgia and Formula 1 tragedies. Family Rules is a fine and moving novel, fraught with lost memories: the portrait of a world that has become corrupted with too much love, in spite of all good intentions.
Matteo Sartori was born in Milan in 1972. He works for a movie production company. In 1997, he published the novel Il magro Rio e la minoranza silenziosa (Frassinelli).
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Amedeo Romeo
DON’T CRY, YOU JERK | Non piangere coglione
novel
192 pages | March 2010
“Identity lost, pursued, and then found. Maybe. Amedeo Romeo’s first novel deals with a subject that is still relegated to the fearful zone of taboo, while keeping the balance between impudence and romance. By thirty-five, Andrea Morin is already divorced and has abandoned a career as an actor once and for all. It is a choice of life, unconsciously driven in order to make his way towards a spiritual path, which is torturous and uncertain. Romeo’s main character does not pursue a professional or social identity; on the contrary, he is chasing his inner self trying to face an irrepressible desire: to have a child. Where’s the taboo? Well, he does not simply want to become a father, he wants to experience the labour pains on himself, so that to fill that “hollow space”, a prerogative of women only. This is not a fashionable coming out, but rather something that causes myths, fears and ancient drives to emerge. Andrea ends up embodying that dimension which belongs to all human beings: the presence of both male and female genders. A promising literary debut” – Corriere della Sera
Andrea Morini is terrified of being a father, as much as he would love to be a mother. He is physically attracted to the female body, especially that of a pregnant woman. The very scent of a stretch mark cream arouses a whole erotic universe in him. Yet, at the same time, he wishes he, too, could carry a baby in his womb and bring forth life. This seemingly irreconcilable contradiction will lead him, among other things, to commute between Genua and Milan, to live on a chair, to befriend a slovenly old actor, to kidnap a kid, and most importantly to love Lena, who is pregnant with another man’s child. Non piangere coglione is the neo-Existentialist novel of 2010. It describes, in a light-hearted and poetical way, the search for happiness of a man like any other. An intelligent and perceptive author, Amedeo Romeo attempts an answer to one of the most compelling questions of our times: what does it mean to want to have a child today?
Amedeo Romeo is an actor, film director, playwright and author of children’s books. He is Head Teacher at Teatri Possibili, Milan.
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Gabriele Reggi
FREE US FROM COPS | Liberaci dagli sbirri
novel
192 pages | January 2010
“It succeeds in being a material and surreal novel at the same time.[...] A tragic, rugged, agonizing western” – EUROPA
“The landscape is reminiscent of Magritte’s paintings, and things happen in a sort of eerie apocalypse. Science-fiction applied to sociology” –
REPUBBLICA XL
A substitute teacher at a school in the deep South of Italy, the main character of the novel soon realizes he has landed in a doomed village, reminiscent of a Stephen King book or an Italian B-movie, rather than Ignazio Silone’s or Ernesto De Martino’s novels. This is not just because mafia is so pervasive that everyone, grown-ups and youths alike, pray every day: Free us from Cops. Not just because the gang masters force all the women in the village to work in the fields, guarded by fierce Kapos. It is mainly because there is a tribal ritual that seems to keep the community together: a gory replica of the crucifixion that marks the fate of the village year in, year out. The teacher’s fate, however, is sealed from the very beginning: madly in love with the wrong woman – the Boss’ girlfriend, beaten and battered, he plans a great escape.
Gabriele Reggi was born in Roseto degli Abruzzi, Italy. He graduated from the Accademia delle Belle Arti. He is currently living in Rieti. He was a substitute teacher in a town in Southern Italy in the early Nineties.
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Paolo Caredda
OTHER DAYS, OTHER TREES | Altri giorni, altri alberi.
novel
202 pages | November 2009
“A mixing of narrative tones which blends fantasy and melancholy in a world that is no more, made of lodges, snack bars, and neighborhood life” – Rolling Stone
“A rough fairy-tale set in an estranged Genoa” – Europa
In a parallel and timeless Genoa, the Christmas Trees engage in fierce battles for the survival of the neighborhoods they represent. The guardian tree of Marassi, Gustavius, suffers from a serious illness which infects humans as well. Will it survive the battle against Mascherafuturo, the ruthless Tree of the rival neighborhood? And will Vinicio, the head doorkeeper, in charge of coaching Gustavius, be able to save Rocco and all the kids of the orphanage run by Mirella, the woman he loves? Other Days, Other Trees is a moving fairytale for grown-ups, rich in pop references and learned quotations: Tiger Mask, Tim Burton, Boris Vian, Jeunet and Caro’s The City of Lost Children, Terry Gilliam, Fist of the North Star and Iain Sinclair.
Paolo Caredda was born in Genoa and he has lived in Bologna, London, Milan. He directed hybrid television formats, mockumentaries on poets from Cogoleto who died at seventeen, sea bishops in communal fountains, imaginary directors. He also directed real-life documentaries on ecstasy addicts, top-notch thieves, Dominican gangas, the Kazakhstan national football team, and Matthew Smith, the Syd Barrett of videogames. He published «Giorno di paga in via Ferretto» for the anthology Gioventù Cannibale and «La città uccello» for Paesaggi Italiani.
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Emanuele Tonon
THE ENEMY | Il nemico
122 pages | novel
Publication date: September 2009
“A book that goes between every day life and spiritual invective, a consuming portrait of Northern Italy” – L’UNITÀ
Emanuele Tonon is the winner of Esor-dire Prize (2009) with The Pain of the Coffee-maker.
Official Jury’s virdict:
“A visionary tale. A driving, dexterous rythm, forceful metaphors, an accomplished tale, vibrating in an authentic, painful realism. This is a scary tale, not because it tells scary things, but because while everything suggests horror in it, nothing really happens in the end. The most frightening thing in the world is to live with broken promises”
In this bipartite novel, Emanuele Tonon creates a memorable family epic, displaying a consummate mastery of style. Relentlessly alternating between high and low style, literary and coarse language, prayer and profanity, Tonon turns writing into a complex esoteric ritual to denounce the unbearable unfairness of existence. Factory life, wine, a dilapidated Benelli motorcycle, Internet and the voices of the dead: it all adds up to making this book a powerful, macabre, magnificent heresy. The Enemy is blasphemy, the fierce accusation of a man towards god: an absolute and deceptive god, who would, if he existed, be liable for the hateful crime of sanctioning pain, death and betrayal.
Emanuele Tonon is born in 1970 in Napoli and now lives in Gorizia as a factory worker. The Enemy is his first novel.
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Omar Di Monopoli
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.
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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 Edizioni he has published Men and Dogs, Iron and Fire and The Fonzi Law.
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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.
English sample available
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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.
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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.
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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.
English sample available
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Michele Vaccari 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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