The beginning of 2023 is rich in new books to read. Many big names in foreign and Italian literature come out with long-awaited novels. Here are some of the titles we suggest you put on your literary wishlist immediately.
book of sistersAmelie Nothombe, Woland
the long-awaited new annual novel by the Belgian writerhas number 31, publishes one a year and follows, like the last, dedicated to his father, autobiographical line. There are two sisters in the novel, Tristan and Laetitia, who bear some resemblance to her and Juliette, her beloved younger sister. The two are told about birth, adolescence and adulthood, as well as the unhealed wounds caused by their parents’ little love for Tristana and Tristana’s excessive love for little Letizia. Being born to parents who love each other so much that they exclude everyone from their lives, including their first child, is a mess. Tristan, in order not to lag behind and not interfere, turns into a monster: at the age of five she reads, writes, cooks, makes purchases for her aunt Bobetta and her dysfunctional cousins, looks after her younger sister Letizia like a real mother and gives her all her love, that her parents didn’t give her. This is also a problem. Black clouds are gathering over the heads of the sisters, waiting for the last storm. In a tragedy told like a comedyin the author’s style, surrounds the entire punk and grunge of the eighties and nineties with a soundtrack.
intimate lifeNiccolo Ammaniti, Einaudi
A cliché novel. In this intimate life of Maria Cristina Palma, a former model, according to a (funny) American study, the most beautiful woman in the world and the wife of Domenico Mascagni, a wealthy lawyer, Prime Minister of Italy, there are many, even too many stereotypes. and a husband who needs one candlestick wife to be shown to the public and to the rulers of half the world. There is mourning in the past world of Maria Christina, her mother, beloved brother and first husband. For this reason, social networks have dubbed her Maria Tristina, a woman who always keeps her heels and in life. Have anorexia, the memory of violence, the fear of being a cuckold, the fear of not loving the daughter. And there’s a world that revolves around her, halfway between Vitelloni Fellini and secular version New Pope SorrentinoPeople: a stalker journalist, a forced personal trainer, a lesbian assistant who hates her, an Indian saint who sells hair dyes, a trendy gay hairdresser, an exclusive spa and a middle-aged population, sweaty, fat Romans, gray hair, tanned. . And then there’s him, Nicola, the little boyfriend from Pario from the 1980s who suddenly materializes, with a home movie, then there were no mobile phones when they wanted to make porn films at the age of 20: he is the director, she is the main character. To the call of the life of Maria Christina revenge porn is not gone either. A book about the stamps of our present, which, unfortunately, tells a lot of truth.
Good girlsOlga Campofreda, NN publisher
A novel equally divided between adventure and nostalgia.about the provincial girls of the eighties, undecided whether to follow the rules or the revolution at hand. Girls from good families of Caserta have a direct life trajectory.: the line that starts from the historical center of the city, continues to the school of nuns, reaches the cathedral for the wedding. All good provincial girls have well-groomed hair, they study, they are wives and mothers, they always say yes to fathers, husbands and boyfriends. Clara is not, she decided to run away from this predetermined fate. He teaches Italian in London to wealthy people, has a very popular Tinder account and a roommate he shares a bed with. She only returned home for her cousin Rossella’s wedding to Luca, her longtime boyfriend. The models have changed, but the good girls of Caserta have not. The return of Clara becomes an occasion to remember, with friends, scandals and troubles, always strangers, never themthey are good girls. Until fate intervenes and dissolves Rossella’s marriage, and the fugitive Clara has to find out that even decent girls who remain in the city hide indescribable secrets.
Cassandra in MogadishuIjaba Skego, Bompiani
The writer, born and living in Italy, returns to a theme dear to her: the loss of a common history and a common language. generations of exiles who survived the civil war that has tormented Somalia for more than half a century. Separated familiesthat of Scego is one of them, scattered across five continents the last generations no longer have a common language or shared memories. Like the narrator, the writer herself, who is beginning to reminisce about New Year’s Eve in Rome, was sixteen, the worst dressed of the group, speaking Italian with words even she doesn’t know the origin of. Through history of Somali Diaspora Children, the memory turns into a long letter to his niece Soraya Omar-Skego, an actress living in Quebec who speaks another language. A novel that becomes a call to the young woman and to all those who were born and raised in a foreign land, with a foreign language, to look for memories in family stories that can be shared. The rhythm is mesmerizing and aching like a necessary burden to bear reach this mirage, unknown and distant, which is Mogadishu, the city that unites them all.
light rainLuis Landero, Phasie
This is also a story about family.but it’s not a memoir, it’s not autobiographical, this is pure fiction, so tell everyone. It is a ruthless breaking of family ties, done with the tip of a pen in a gentle tone, while a sharp blade penetrates deep. Relatives of snakes. Eight characters, four cores or semi-families, twenty years of denials, secrets, lies, misunderstandings, malice, which only hypocrisy keeps in check. Gabriel, a professor of philosophy, a good man, a dreamer, a naive man, married to Aurora, an angel like his name, wants to celebrate the eightieth birthday of his mother, a manic-depressive who ruined everyone’s life. His father, Gabriel, has the same name, is dead, so he, the only boy, will have to organize a party. And he decides to call his sisters, Sonya, the eldest, Andrea, the middle one. He seems to have forgotten that the three have not spoken or gossiped about each other for twenty yearsthey don’t meet. Aurora, the only one who has maintained relations with her husband’s family, is called to act as an intermediary, to smooth the corners. Because she is someone who knows how to listen and has become everyone’s confidant. Phone calls turn into a hellish journey to tragedy. The story begins with a drizzle and becomes a storm: the voice of two sisters, mother, Horatio, the ex-husband of one and the former lover of another sister, the memory of a father who only knew how to tell a lie. This is a full flowing river it’s all an accusation of guilt. Sonya is still angry because she wanted to be called Gabriela, inherited the last name, and instead it was the boy’s turn. The wake-up call warned us at the beginning, when the sister says to Aurora: “You don’t know, but Gabriel is not what he seems”. If memories are quicksand, finding the truth is a difficult task.
Source: Elle