TURIN – “Hysterical Night”a 160-page novel included in the “Riflessi” series, directed by Sara Rattaro and Mauro Morellini, for Morellini editore, in bookshops from 7 June for €17.
Turin, “Hysterical Night” by Miran Bax
Hysteria is an uncontrolled act of excitement and what happened on the night of December 10, 2011 is just that. An escalation of violent actions by dozens of people who attack nomads’ shacks and caravans without knowing why they do it and without stopping until everything has burned down. The fact: Turin 2011. Roma shacks and caravans set on fire: this is how the torchlight procession organized in Turin ended with a gypsy camp set on fire to express solidarity with the 16-year-old girl who reported being raped by two gypsies while she was returning home. A violence which, however, never occurred: in the evening, in fact, the alleged victim of the rape, in front of the Carabinieri of the Provincial Command of the Piedmontese capital, admitted to having made the whole thing up completely and confessed to having had sexual intercourse with a boy (circumstance confirmed by medical tests carried out). A lie from which the story begins Miran Bax tells.
Inspired by a Turin news story that strongly shook national public opinion in 2011, this novel unfolds through the first-person stories of four characters. Mara is sixteen years old, she is in love with Giuseppe and talks about the long-awaited “first time”. When she confides to her brother Giacomo that she was raped by two gypsies, he and some of her friends organize a torchlight procession of solidarity, with the idea of razing the nomad camp to the ground. And while Debora, who witnessed the fire from the window of her house, has to deal with her mental health, Steve, originally from Albania, questions his belonging to the group and denies its actions. But the desire to leave and start again is suffocated by the fear of remaining alone in a place where he himself is a foreigner. Notte Isterica is a lucid analysis of the contemporary world, ruthless, racist and always ready to judge.
“Hysterical night”, the author’s words and the incipit
The author states:
«I decided to tell this episode because of the violence with which the citizens reacted, who even went so far as to prevent the firefighters from intervention to put out the fire. I was very struck by the fact that the event took place in Turin, which in those years seemed to be the city of hospitality par excellence. Now I live in Belluno but Turin is my city and I am always involved in what happens there. As a parent, I was also struck by how much the obligations and prohibitions we impose on our children can affect our children and how often we are blinded by the desire to show them the “right path” without listening to what they really want.»
Below is the incipit of the work:
«I spend all the time I can at the window. When I’ve finished the housework and don’t go for a walk, I just stand there in front. I read and clean my puppets, on the table near the window, and from that window I saw everything. There were a lot of people in the street, everyone was shouting: let’s burn everything and someone had thrown incendiary bombs while others started the fire and the flames went high into the sky and I could hear them crackling. The smoke was black and thick and rose, swelling and mixing with the clouds. It was scary. I saw everything and I wanted to call my father but I couldn’t scream or even move and I watched those barbarians attack the nomad camp while everything continued to burn. Now I’m afraid to go out even during the day but I can’t say it out loud. “Go for a walk and don’t lose your good habits, nothing will happen to you”, my mother gets angry and makes me angry because she doesn’t understand me: “Mom, how can I stay calm after what happened?” And then all hell breaks out, she starts screaming and waving her right hand towards the sky: “Now the neighborhood is safer than before. Go out and stop worrying about nothing.” But I’m not calm, she’s talking because she didn’t see anything, she only heard what I told her and what her friends and neighbors told her. So I feel offended and I get angry and I try to make her understand how things really are: “You’re only talking because you didn’t see anything, because you slept soundly and then in the morning you woke up well rested and everything was like the other days.” ”, I scream as loud as I can».
Turin, the biography of Miran Bax
Miran Bax, pseudonym of Massimo Anania, was born in the foggy outskirts of Turin, lives and works in Belluno. In 2018 he published the novel Autostop per la notte (Miraggi edizioni) which reached the final of the 2019 “Prunola” prize and received an honorable mention at the 2021 “Tre colori” prize. In 2020 he published the novel Tutto l’amore che manca ( Mirages editions). In 2021 he won the literary prize Tell Me In 25 Words for the “most significant story”. In 2023, under the pseudonym Miran Bax he won the literary prize Tell Me In 25 Words for the “most original story”.
