The editorial and literary twinning between Calabria and Molise intensifies, already started a few years ago by Florindo Rubbettino of Soveria Mannelli who continues to successfully publish the many books by Giose Rimanelli, a well-known Italian-American author born in the province of Campobasso. Now it is the turn of the University of Generations of Badolato (CZ) which is editing the publication of the architect’s novel “Via dei Colli 48” Marianna Mastronardi, a tragic family story that has as its backdrop the depopulation of the villages and countryside in Molise as well as throughout the Apennine ridge. At the center of the narrative is the house of the maternal grandmother Iolanda Lalli, abandoned in 1981 to emigrate permanently to Germany from the small town of Mafalda (CB). In fact, now Marianna Mastronardi, now 43 years old, has felt the urgent need to counteract the unsustainable depopulation of her village by telling this family story, emblematic of countless other situations of abandonment of towns and countryside.
The novel
The incipit of this novel (i.e. the first chapter) “Via dei Colli 48” was published a few days ago by some Calabrian and Sicilian websites normally available to disseminate the press notes from the University of Generations, especially when it comes to similar themes. To combat this depopulation as much as possible, Marianna Mastronardi intends to launch, with this book, an international appeal inviting Italian and foreign families who love the sun and nature of our South to live in the houses of the village and countryside of Mafalda and of the rest of abandoned rural Italy. An invitation, therefore, which also applies to Calabria and the other regions suffering from this very serious situation. The urgent imperative is to save rurality and its values which have held up well for millennia and which now cannot be surrendered to wild globalisation.
The initiative
Therefore, any means is good to counteract the depopulation of villages and countryside, even a novel. Thus, we can consider that that of Marianna Mastronardi “architect-writer” is a book-appeal, a heartfelt SOS or a bottle thrown into the “mare magnum” of the web. The first to respond was Giuseppe Orlando, mayor of Poggio Sannita (in the province of Isernia), a municipality which (despite being rich in fine vineyards, vegetable gardens and olive groves) loses dozens and dozens of inhabitants every year. Mayor Orlando is organizing a special meeting-conference against depopulation during which the architect. Mastronardi will illustrate his recipe next August when numerous emigrants will also be present. Furthermore, «This novel – states Domenico Lanciano, precursor of the struggles not to let the villages die with the story of “Badolato village for sale” already in 1986 – will rightfully enter the literary collection of “Spop-Art” or art against depopulation ».
