Strega Prize 2023, here are the twelve semifinalists – Corriere.it

For the second time in three years, Maria Grazia Calandrone enters the dozen of the 2023 Strega Prize with the novel Where you didn’t take me (Einaudi). There is also his name in the selection announced on March 30 at the Temple of Hadrian, in Rome, by the jurors of the award’s Steering Committee. In the first row there is then Roman Petriwith Steal the night (Mondadori), among the signatures already seen at Strega: the translator, editor and literary critic had been a finalist twice in the past (in 1998 with At the Venie Housesin 2013 with Children of the same father).

Among the favourites Rosella Postorinowho accesses the group of 12 chosen with I was just loving you (Feltrinelli). With them enter the shortlist of candidates who will have to compete for access to the final on June 7 at the Roman Theater of Benevento, five other women: the Marche Silvia Ballestrawith The Sybil. Life of Joyce Lussu (Laterza) – also for the second time in the dozen after the exploit of 2020 -, Ada D’Adamo, Like air (Elliot), the Roman writer of Somali origin Igiaba Scegowith the memoir Cassandra in Mogadishu (Bompiani), Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, Back from the woods (Marsilio) e Carmen Green, in his novel debut with A little unhappiness (Neri Pozza).

The semi-finalists, on the other hand, enter the ranks of male writing Andrew Canobbio (already among the five finalists at the Strega in 2000) with the family romance The night crossing (The ship of Theseus), the Asti Gian Marco Griffi, with Railways of Mexico (Laurana Publisher), Vincent Latronico with his fourth novel The perfections (Bompiani) and Andrew Tarabbia with The White Continent (Borlati Boringhieri).

Eight women and four men chosen from the 80 initial titles proposed this year by the Amici della Domenica will therefore compete the literary recognition promoted by the Maria and Goffredo Bellonci Foundation and Liquore Strega with the support and contribution of Roma Capitale, the Rome Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with Bper Banca and Tirreno Power, media partner Rai, technical sponsors Ibs.it and Sygla. The dozen is therefore colored pink. And the Prize was already so from the beginning, given that in the first selection there were 45 female authors, chosen by many men given that only 28 of the recommendations from the Sunday Friends had been made by women.

The choice of the semifinalists was made by the members of the Steering Committee of the Strega Prize: Pietro Abate, Giuseppe D’Avino, Valeria Della Valle, Ernesto Ferrero, Alberto Foschini, Paolo Giordano, Dacia Maraini, Melania G. Mazzucco (president), Gabriele Pedullà , Stefano Petrocchi, Marino Sinibaldi, Antonio Scurati and Giovanni Solimine. The election of the winner will take place on July 6 at the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, in Rome. Compared to the first large list of candidates, some famous authors are excluded today: first of all the musician of Albanian origins Ermal Meta, who with the debut novel Tomorrow and forever traces the history of his country; then Marcello Fois, who was in the race with My Babel (Solferino) but also Maria Castellitto – daughter of Sergio and Margaret Mazzantini – with Menodrama (Marsilius). Even the intense biography of Ennio Flaiano written for Mondadori by Renato Minore and Francesca Pansa did not pass the selection.

Going back to the favorite titles for this edition of Strega 2023, the poetess, writer, journalist, playwright, author and radio host Calandrone – who, moreover, is on the Scientific Committee of the first edition of the Strega Poesia Prize (announced last March 21) – had participated in the edition of 2021 entering the dozen but had failed to pass the selection of the five despite the great appreciation for its Shine like life (Ponte alle Grazie), that year in competition. His new novel, writes Franco Buffoni in the form with which he proposed the nomination «is a masterful historical reconstruction of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s, who manages to reconstruct environments and situations (rural Molise, the Milanese suburbs in full economic boom, a magical Rome of haughty and disconsolate beauty) in a highly poetic yet finely realistic way». And the author specifies: «Mine is a book of love and death, it is the story of my biological parents, but it also wants to be the story of Italy in those years and of Rome in which my parents decided to leave the their life”.

Rosella Postorino instead returned to the bookstore at the end of January with I was just loving younovel inspired by the true story of Omar and Nada, children in Sarajevo in 1992, taken away on a July morning on a bus to escape the bombs and find refuge in Italy: a story that forces us to come to terms with the war in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine, and to confront the drama, the tear of separation. «I am inspired by a true story that I had discovered from an article in a newspaper: this book is about war – says Postorino – and about the traces it leaves in people, about lacerations, but it is also a novel that talks about separation as an inevitable condition in existence of every human being.

In the next weeks the 12 candidate authors and finalists at the LXXVII edition of the Strega Prize will meet the public in 20 stages of a trip through Italy, and a twenty-first abroad at the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin (again this year Moscow was excluded, on the recommendation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “It was considered appropriate – explain the Bellonci Foundation – not to invite the Russian jurors to avoid exploitation that could harm the prestige of the Prize»). In the months of April and May they will be guests of the Libraries of Rome and on 5 July at the Strega Off.

In recent days the controversy triggered by Giorgio Montefoschi (Witch Prize 1994) had been discussed on the initial number of books presented at the literary Strega: as many as 80 (and at the Strega Poesia they are 135); from 41 in 2018, the proposals increased to 57 in 2019, 54 in 2020, 62 in 2021 and 74 in 2022. The technical jury took weeks to read the books and choose 12. Melania G. Mazzucco, president of the Steering Committee, has required to specify that the high number of works of fiction in Italian is due to the fact that precisely «the definition of fiction is by now very broad, because the trend of recent years has stabilised: novels and short stories are no longer the genre prevalent, undermined by biographies and autobiographies, memoirs, fiction, non-fiction, diaries».

«We analyzed the data of the books proposed by the Amici della Domenica since 2018 (the year from which each book was reported by a single juror) and we compared them with those of the previous period – explains Stefano Petrocchi, director of the Bellonci Foundation -. In addition to the increase in the overall number of candidates, it has been registered a significant increase in new publishers entering the prize, many of whom continued their journey in the dozen candidates».

Giovanni Solimine, president of the Foundation, agrees: «Some publishers are participating for the first time and this year too we have confirmation of the Strega Prize’s ability to grow and renew itself: many female authors, including some at their debut». Mazzucco then underlined the “traumatic” climate of many stories: «Last year we noticed that the works had been written or completed in the isolation of the pandemic years, which had involved intimate tones and self-confessions. Now the long wave of shock has hit the books. For the most part the books are written in the sign of trauma – private, personal, sometimes secret and unspeakable, but also public, historical and collective -. The main leitmotifs are death, loss (of a person, of one’s country), illness and mourning».

In the books competing for Strega 2023, then, another recurring narrative space is the hospital (from the pediatric to the psychiatric clinic, up to the RSA), where «the body of the individual and the landscape of the nation are equally threatened and attacked by ruin – continues Mazzucco -. The Italy portrayed in these books is a wounded and sick country, and also in the Strega Poesia Prize there is a singular convergence on these themes». Yet in mourning there is a light of hope in the call to nature. And there is a positive sign: trust in literature: “Never before in these uncertain, traumatized and dark times – says Mazzucco -, writing is proposed as medicine and as a cure”. And in this sense, concludes Stefano Petrocchi, the Strega Prize “plays more and more the function of a national prize, bringing out and making visible the precious element of bibliodiversity in the context of Italian fiction”.

The nominated books will be read and voted on by a jury made up of 660 eligible candidates. In addition to the votes of the Amici della Domenica are those expressed by scholars, translators and enthusiasts of our language and literature selected by Italian cultural institutes abroad, strong readers chosen by independent bookstores distributed throughout Italy, collective votes cast by schools, universities and reading groups, including the circles set up by the Libraries of Rome. The same books will also compete for the X edition of Young Witch Award and will be read and voted on by a jury made up of 1,000 male and female students from upper secondary schools in Italy and abroad.