“Rereading my first book was a shock, I was fascinated by the writer I was at the beginning”, confesses Carola Susani in this video interview which revolves around the re-edition of “Il libro di Teresa”, her debut novel. “Among my first very tall models there was also Elsa Morante, my mother read La Storia to me before going to sleep. In Palermo I trained thanks to friends and teachers…”
Carola Susani, Venetian but Sicilian by adoption, has returned to bookshops thanks to a happy intuition by Christian Raimo and thanks to Marietti 1820, who, approximately thirty years after the first edition, has brought her debut novel back to bookshops, Teresa’s book (125 pages, 16.90 euros), originally published by Giunti, in a series edited by Enzo Siciliano, and now back on the market, with an afterword written for the occasion by Chiara Valerio. A happily outdated book, a distinctive feature of its author, who has always gone her own way. «Rereading my book in view of the new edition – confesses Carola Susani – was a shock, in the sense that I found it very powerful, I was very fascinated by this writer that I was, who emerged like this and published this first book of hers, and as always happens with the first books there was a whole world inside. Today I am certainly a different writer, not in terms of the type of questions I ask myself, which are always the same, which concern being in the world, life, death, good, evil, that is, radical questions. But as for the way I write today compared to then, when I was dense, I was rough, today I try to be more unraveled. I feel a distance and a closeness, as I think is natural…”.
In the biographical and literary background of Carola Susani (here we wrote about her The first life of Italo Orlando) and in his debut the models are very high, the Holy Scriptures, the great Russians, Elsa Morante. That is, her first readings as a child, her first approaches to the world of books, she only later discovered children’s literature. «My father – she explains – had recently left Catholicism and had brought with her the Bible, the Gospel and a very high idea of faith, he was a reader of Simon Weil. At the same time we had a library where there were no children’s books, so from a very young age I found myself, understanding or not understanding, reading, at a very young age, books of a certain weight, Tolstoy, Anne Frank, Elsa Morante, my mother he read Historywhen I was nine years old, before going to sleep…”.
Carola Susani (here are some of her reading recommendations on our YouTube channel) presented Teresa’s book in Palermo, within Marina di Libri, and for her the Sicilian capital is not a place like all the others. She lived in Palermo, her family of origin joined Danilo Dolci in Sicily, and in Palermo she also trained as a writer. With exceptional traveling companions, from Francesco Gambaro to Gaetano Testa, to Michele Perriera. «Gambaro was for me – remembers Carola Susani – friend, older brother, teacher, whose words are hilarious, very powerful and unforgettable for me. He, Gaetano Testa, Michele Perriera were a training ground. In Palermo I forged my voice in every sense…”.
Here is the full video interview, enjoy
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