For the series of literary encounters linked to the Book Club of our Institute, we are pleased to host the online conversation with the writer Federica Sgaggio, whose novel, “L’eredità dei vivi“, has just received a special mention of the jury for the Zanibelli award “La parola che cura”.
The conversation will be moderated by Enrica Maria Ferrara (Trinity College Dublin) and the Irish novelist Catherine Dunne.
Free online event in Italian and English on Zoom platform available upon registration.
Register HERE.
“L’eredità dei vivi/The legacy of the living” is Federica Sgaggio’s memoir about her mother Rosa and her disabled brother, Francesco. They are the main characters of a family saga covering several decades in which we are told about the powerful, symbiotic relationship between a mother and her daughter cemented by the trauma of Francesco’s disability. This strong bond, unhealthy at times, gives way to an equally strong need to pursue an independent life which will lead Federica to travel to Ireland and build a new identity for herself.
Federica Sgaggio lives between Verona where she grew up and where she worked as a journalist, and Galway, in Ireland where she has studied English literature. Her debut novel was Due colonne taglio basso (Sironi 2008), followed by L’avvocato G. (Intermezzi 2016), and by the essay Il paese dei buoni e dei cattivi. Perchè il giornalismo, invece di informarci, ci dice da che parte stare (minimum fax 2011). With Catherine Dunne, she edited an Italian-Irish collection titled Tra una vita e l’altra (Guanda, 2015; published with the title Lost Between: Writings on Displacement by New Island Books).
Catherine Dunne is the author of eleven published novels, and one work of non-fiction, “An Unconsidered People” (2003), exploring the lives of Irish immigrants in 1950s London. An updated edition was published in October 2021.
Her novels include: “The Things We Know Now”, recipient of the Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013 and shortlisted for the Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. “The Years That Followed”, longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2018; and “Come cade la luce” (The Way the Light Falls), shortlisted for the European Strega Prize for Fiction in 2019.
Catherine received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2018. In January 2021 she was decorated as Cavaliere of the Order Stella d’Italia.
Enrica Maria Ferrara is a Teaching Fellow in Italian at Trinity College Dublin. She has published widely on Italian literature, theatre and cinema. She collaborates with the Irish radio and the Italian Institute of Culture in Dublin. As a translator, her most recent volume is “Disaster Narratives in Early Modern Naples” (Viella, 2018), edited by Cecere et al. Her recent book-lentgh publications include: “Staged Narratives / Narrative Stages” (co-edited with C. Ó Cuilleanáin, Franco Cesati, 2017); “Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity” (ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); “Reading Domenico Starnone” (co-edited with S. Milkova, 2021, https://readingintranslation.com/reading-domenico-starnone/).