Tuesday April 23 at 6pm from Liberrima Leccewe are waiting for you with Marco Ferrante to talk about his novel Return to Pugliapublished by Bompiani.
Dialogue with the author Mario Carparelliprofessor at the University of Salento
The book
Bernardo Bleve has a complex relationship with his land – a Puglia represented in its ancient beauty but without any form of rhetoric -, with his family – his wife Elena, his children Gelasio, who works in London in the world of high finance, Francesca and the young Pietro – and with the farm she inherited and transformed into a prosperous industrial beverage company. All bonds in which idealism and vanity, hypocrisy and the desire to work for redemption are mixed. At the end of the nineties, almost as if he felt the need to make amends, through his own commitment, for an immense misfortune – the sinking of a patrol boat full of refugees by an Italian warship in the waters off Brindisi -, Bernardo welcomes an Albanian family. Suspended between a past left beyond the sea and the future that opens up in Italy for their children, the Albanians bring with them new energies but at the same time break the ancient balance. Everyone in this novel, moreover, has to deal with the theme of guilt: because “we never really know how much harm we have done to others”, even when we were moved by the best intentions. Marco Ferrante writes a novel about the impulses and contradictions of a bourgeoisie that declares itself progressive but is animated by the most unspeakable motives, and about the illusions that can sustain us for a lifetime or make us take the wrong path. And it gives life to a story that reads like a gripping family saga but has the density of a tragedy.
The author
Marco Ferrante was born in Martina Franca in 1964. Journalist and writer, with novels Never at half past four (Fazi 1998) e Gin and tonic with eyes closed (Giunti 2016) participated in two editions of the Strega award. He also wrote two books of portraits, Casa Agnelli (Mondadori 2007, 2008), Marchionne (Mondadori 2009, 2011, 2018). You have worked in print media and on TV (The paper, The Reformist, Tg5, was deputy director of La7). He is currently at Mediaset, deputy director of Video news.
