Friday 1st September 2023, 6:30pm – 8:00pm at the Italian Institute of Culture, Pavilion Hall – in ITALIAN
In the context of the conference ”Giuseppe Pontiggia: On the 20th Anniversary of his Death” taking place on 31st August and 1st September at University College Dublin, the Italian Institute of Culture is pleased to invite you to the presentation of Guido Conti’s new novel La siccità (Bompiani, 2023), in the presence of the author in conversation with Marco Bellardi (UCD). A brief seminar by the author himself about the writing of Giuseppe Pontiggia will follow.
La siccità is set at the beginning of a torrid summer, after a few years of rain having become rare, unpredictable and violent, and crop suffering as a consequence. In the small village of Oltrepò Pavese where Andrea lives, the life of those who cultivate the land is increasingly difficult. One hailstorm is enough to lose the work of months in a few hours. The land, cracked by thirst, hides its resources deep inside and so even wild animals begin to display strange behaviours: like the badgers, digging among the graves in the cemetery in search of coolness and water, but ‘when you disturb the dead the whole village suffers’. Andrea knows that the best thing would be to leave, as so many have done, and look for a new life far from that thirsty land, even if that is where his roots are; but at the same time he is fascinated by the mysteries of nature and the archaic ferocity of his father and uncle, who allow him to follow them into the woods at night. Day after day, drought takes away the crops as well as the mental sanity of an entire community, in a sequence of events and omens through which the destiny of men and animals becomes intertwined. For the protagonist of this tale and for a small fox, it will be a summer of growth, pain and loss, which Guido Conti narrates with a confident voice, attentive to every detail, capable of capturing the epiphanies that each season holds in store for those who pass through it.
Guido Conti is a writer, illustrator, editor, essayist and teacher. He won the Premio Chiara in 1998 for the anthology of short stories Il coccodrillo sull’altare (Guanda), the Premio Selezione Campiello 1999 for I cieli di vetro (Guanda) and the Hemingway Prize for criticism in 2008 with Giovannino Guareschi, biografia di uno scrittore (Rizzoli). With Il Grande fiume Po, (Mondadori 2012; Giunti 2022) he won the Carlo Levi Prize. His novels include Il tramonto sulla pianura (Guanda 2005), Le mille bocche della nostra sete (Mondadori 2010) and Quando il cielo era il mare e le nuvole balene (Giunti 2018). For children, he wrote and illustrated the saga of the stork Nilou translated in Spain, Greece, Austria, South Korea and China. As an essayist, he has published Cesare Zavattini a Milano (1929-1939), Letteratura, rotocalchi, radio, fotografia, editoria, fumetti, cinema, pittura (2019); La città d’oro. Parma, literature 1200-2022 (2020), both published by Libreria Ticinum editore. As a teacher, he published Imparare a scrivere con i grandi (Rizzoli 2016). For over twenty years, he has held workshops on the didactics of reading and writing from primary schools to university masters in communication.
Marco Bellardi is Assistant Professor and Head of Italian at University College Dublin. His research focuses on contemporary literature and the interrelationship between cinema and literature. On Pontiggia, he has published several articles and the monograph Uno smisurato equilibrio. La narrativa sperimentale di Giuseppe Pontiggia (Franco Cesati, 2014).
For further information about the conference and a detailed programme please see here.
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