Florence, 6 June 2024 – Fabio Genovesi won the second edition of the award “The city of readers” with the novel “Pure gold” (Mondadori, 2023). The author was selected by the popular jury of over 750 members of the Unicoop reading clubs. Also among the finalists Igiaba Scego, Leonardo Gori, Marco Vichi, Laura Pugno, Gianluca MonastraAnd Carmen Verdepresent Yesterday for the delivery of the recognition to Villa Bardini, which officially opened the 7th edition of the “La città dei Lavoratori” festival, which will last until June 9th.
The story of “Oro Puro” opens in Palos, Spain, in August 1492. Nuno is sixteen years old, and despite living on the sea he has never wanted to sail it. This is why his mother called him “crab” – like crabs, he looks at the sea from the ground. Until, due to a series of circumstances as unfortunate as they are random, he has to board a ship whose destination he does not know: the Santa María, on board which Christopher Columbus will discover the New World. Spending hours listening to him talk about his dreams, Nuno becomes Columbus’s scribe – it is through his gaze that we travel on one of the most important journeys in the history of humanity. Thus Genovesi recounts Columbus’s navigation as never before, immersing the reader in “a great human, existential and sentimental adventure”, and “remembering how violence, abuse and misunderstandings hide behind the Western discovery of the Americas, but above all the ‘the irrepressible, eternal instinct of men to take, consume and destroy everything, even themselves.’
After his debut with two now cult books, “Death of the Marbles” (Laterza, 2012) and “Versilia Rock City” (Mondadori, 2013), Genovesi experienced gradually growing success, winning the Young Witch Award In the 2015 with “Who sends the waves” (Mondadori). The City of Readers prize won yesterday by the author was established by the festival thanks to the collaboration between the Wimbledon APS Association and Unicoop Florence.
