Orbetello book Prize, third edition. Lidia Ravera wins with One day all this will be yours (Bompiani). Career tribute given to Bjorn Larsson
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Satisfaction, enthusiasm and boom in participation for the third edition of Orbetello Book Prize – Maremma Tuscany Coast, the international literary prize dedicated to quality fiction, which in these three days has continued to gather consensus from the public.
The winner of this third edition is the novel One day all this will be yours by Lidia Ravera (Bompiani).
The winner was chosen by the Jury of the Selection Group, the Gruppo Lettori Forti di Orbetello, the Gruppo giovani lettori di Orbetello who come from the Liceo Classico, Liceo Scientifico, Istituto Nautico. And, finally, also by the Group “Amici del Parco della lettura”, this year made up of 100 members. 98 voters out of 105 cast their vote.
The counting of the ballots took place on Saturday 29 June at the Municipality of Orbetello.
Attention and lively emotion on the Orbetello Book Prize stage for the awarding of the Lifetime Achievement Tribute to Björn Larsson, one of the most well-known and appreciated Scandinavian authors also in Italy.
“It is always encouraging to receive a prestigious award, because behind it there are readers who take literature seriously – he said Bjorn Larsson -. It is even more important when the prize is not given only for the latest ‘news’ or the one ‘everyone is talking about’. In this world made of fragments and a sea of bits, an award like the Orbetello award reminds us that literature must not have an expiry date.”
The winners received a sculpture that faithfully reproduces the terminal part of the cast iron columns that delimit the area of the Chiusi Gardens and is made with care and passion by a historic Orbetello craftsman Ilio Campidonico.
Valeria Parrella received a special mention with Little Miracles and Other Betrayals (Feltrinelli).
The three evenings were presented by Carola Carullijournalist, presenter of Tg2, writer (in bookstores with Tutto il bene, tutto il male, Salani). The other finalists: Susanna Bissoli with “I Folgorati” (Einaudi) and Antonio Franchini with “Il fuoco che ti porta dentro” (Marsilio).
“It is a recognition that comes to a writer with great experience and ability to construct stories that bet on the public life/private life dialectic – declared Paolo Di Paolo, President of the selection Jury –; indeed, since her sensational debut, Lidia Ravera has given life to an emotional counter-history of the country between the late twentieth century and the first decades of the current century, with particular attention to the “seasons” of existence: extreme youth and desire and revolt, maturity not only as disenchantment, the “third time” not only as surrender”.
“It was a great return for me to present the Orbetello Book Prize – declared Carola Carulli -. Returning to the stage of this award for the second time and having alongside me authors who have an important professional path in the Italian literary scene and are recognized by professionals as well as by readers who follow them constantly, with novels that have fascinated the public, is for me confirmation that working with books is always a source of energy, food for thought and sharing of stories. This is demonstrated – concludes Carulli – by the active participation of the public with questions”.
“I continue to express my personal satisfaction for the Orbetello Book Prize. – declared Maddalena Ottali, Councilor for Culture and Tourism of the Municipality of Orbetello -. The third edition has ended and I am enthusiastic and proud to see how this prize has consolidated the relationship between the territory, the public and citizens, both those involved in the jury and the users of the event. I therefore thank all those who work with dedication and perseverance on this reality that will soon begin to think about the fourth edition, knowing full well that the success of an event lies above all in the way and time that is dedicated to it. If today I think of the first edition, I see with great pride the many authors who were our guests and I add, I think of David Leavitt, Fernando Aramburu and Bjorn Larsson who have certainly embellished the prize with their presence”.
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The winning novel’s card: “One day all this will be yours” by Lidia Ravera (Bompiani, 2024)
After a successful series of novels dedicated to the third period, Lidia Ravera surprises us by taking on the voice of a boy: honest to the point of cruelty, ferocious like the innocent, capable of sensing the spirit of the time and finding the right words to evoke it. And as usual Ravera makes us first smile, then reflect, and finally shudder.
Seymour is fifteen and likes to call himself a disturbed teenager. No social media, he doesn’t bully or get bullied, he doesn’t have a team to support or even a girl to photograph. In short, he doesn’t perform any of the dance moves expected for his age. His main activity is spying on the commotion of the adult world around him. His only passion is writing, to be precise, writing a masterpiece, possibly without becoming a writer like his cumbersome seventy-year-old father, Giovanni Sartoris, “vain, self-centered and fake”, a successful author, serial husband for a total of four children spread across three wives. There is no understanding between the two, but no conflict either. As for the women in his life, Anna, the first of Giovanni’s ex-wives, is Seymour’s favorite, even if she could be his grandmother. The second, the American Alison, is his biological mother, and Seymour can’t stand her. The third, a thirty-nine-year-old former drug addict confined to a wheelchair, is for him a curious model of an eternal adolescent. As he observes his adults of reference, Seymour perceives the sinister creaks of a world that is crumbling, both in the concrete alternation of drought and storm and in the abstract degradation of relationships between men and women and between men and women with success, the myth that has supplanted every other belief or certainty. When Giovanni, the winner par excellence, is overwhelmed by a storm of defamatory accusations, Seymour will find himself having to play a leading role. He will have to understand and explain, accuse and forgive. In a word: grow up. But what flavor does the human adventure of growing up have in this threatened and tired world? What can we leave to those who come after us?
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