Saturday 8 June 2024 – Claudia Durastanti will be in Potenza on June 14th at 5.00 pm for a meeting on her latest novel, Missitalia, published by La nave di Teseo.
The event will be held at the Library Center in via Don Minozzi which, together with the Ubik bookshop in Potenza, took care of its organisation.
The author, born in the USA and raised in Gallicchio, will dialogue with the journalist and writer Renato Cantorewith Raffaele The QueenPhD student in Contemporary History at the University of Basilicata and with Giovanna SolimandoCultural Manager.
He will open the meeting Luigi CatalaniDirector of the Potenza Library Centre.
After the international success of The foreigner, finalist for the Premio Strega and translated into more than 25 countries, in Potenza Claudia Durastanti will talk about Missitalia, his latest novel, traversed by magical and elusive figures, between ancient and future eras, in a South that becomes Earth: that of ancestral belonging and the planet observed from afar, in search of a harbinger of light.
The narrative runs through three eras, a long period that goes from the second half of 1800 to 2051 in the near future which takes the reader to the Moon. The protagonists are three women – Amalia Spada, Ada and A – united by a network of invisible yet tangible correspondences.
Amalia Spada is an adventurer far from the turmoil that shakes the insurgent nation; a woman with a restless and reckless spirit. She lives in a house among the Lucanian badlands that has become a refuge for disinherited and rebellious creatures in search of a new life, for wild girls and men with broken strength. When industrialization arrives, the Factory falls into their lives like a dark object of desire, changing their destiny forever.
In the post-war years and the energy rush, a young anthropologist named Ada explores the Basilicata of spells and oil while discovering the changing incarnations of love. Moving between centers of power and extraction plants, Ada finds herself entangled in a disturbing and magnetic South that revolutionizes the course of her existence.
One hundred years later, Lucania became the base for the colonization of the Moon: the Mediterranean Space Agency’s spacecraft headed for the Brave New World depart from here. In this futuristic settlement, there is A, a solitary and free woman who gives life to no longer desired objects on behalf of the Agency. In her past there was a husband, but also the need to go far away; in her present, the desire to reconcile with the idea of the end.
Basilicata, which is the backdrop to this narrative which moves between different genres, from Western to Noir to Science Fiction, is a South finally free from many of the stereotypes through which it has often been told and in which the characters move between the pages with lightness , audacity and disenchantment. It is an imaginary and imagined South, in which Anthropology and History give way to a modernity which perhaps, in some passages, is even predictive.
They wrote about Missitalia
“Although so different from The foreignerhighly appreciated for the different way of describing the self, Missitalia it belongs to the same existential journey, which starts from the roots and ends far away. On the Moon, or on top of the gullies of Lucania”. (Laura Pezzino, Vanity Fair)
“With a chorus of characters in which three women stand out, Durastanti overturns the narrative of the South as a periphery of the West, seeking instead the signs of the profound movements of the present and future”. (Vincenzo Latronico, La Stampa)
They said to The foreignerClaudia Durastanti’s previous novel
“With elegant style and clear vision, Claudia Durastanti rewrites her family history: a coming-of-age novel where the roles are often reversed, always on the edge of danger and failure.” Corriere della Sera
“Cruel and light at the same time, colorful like an amusement park. To be read and reread.” the Republic
“The foreigner chronicles the protagonist’s erratic attempts to find her own path to adulthood, peppered with romantic and unreliable characters.” The Paris Review
“A very personal writing that brings moving characters to life, managing to keep their mystery intact.” The New Yorker
“It perfectly intercepts the errors, silences and gaps that arise in all relationships.” The New York Times
CLAUDIA DURASTANTI (Brooklyn, 1984), is a writer and translator from English. His debut novel One day I will come and throw stones at your window (2010, new edition La nave di Teseo 2020) won the Mondello Giovani Award. He published To Chloe, for the wrong reasons (2013), Cleopatra goes to prison (2016) e The foreigner (La nave di Teseo 2019), finalist in the Premio Strega, translated into more than 25 countries and among the best books of 2022 for New Yorker. He has a music column on Internazionale. He edits the Turtle books.
