CARIATI – A large audience, also present from the surrounding towns, participated in the meeting with the famous writer Carmine Abate, who presented his latest novel “A happy country”, published by Mondadori at the Museum of the Sea, Agriculture and Cariati migrations.
«The meeting, included in the museum programming October 2023-June 2024 and sponsored by the Municipal Administration of Cariati, – reports the note from the Museum – took place in the presence of the Mayor Cataldo Minò and the Delegate for Culture Alda Montesantowho cordially greeted the Calabrian writer from Carfizzi (Kr), winner of the 2012 Campiello prize, now “at home” in the Ionian town for having presented his books there several times, and where the musician lives Cataldo Perri, who spoke at the meeting, with whom he brings successful literary-musical shows around Italy and abroad. The cultural afternoon at the museum was enriched by the music and singing of Alysea Fortino And Giusy Cosenzastudents of “Tchaikovsky” Conservatory of Catanzaro, belonging to the “LibereNote Fortunato Russo” Association, who offered beautiful pieces from the classical and pop repertoire».
«At the beginning, the Director of the museum and curator of the event Assunta Scorpiniti, expressed satisfaction at having found, in the museum narrative, the themes of his books, which – underlined by the Director herself – reveal a profound bond with Calabria, enriched by the identities acquired “by addition”, according to a definition dear to him , for having lived in Calabria, Bari, Germany and Trentino; but he also highlighted, among other things, the strong “civil” connotation of Abate’s novels, almost all published by Mondadori. The writer focused on this for a long time, and later, in the debate with the public, talking about “A happy country”, Erava, in the Piana di Gioia Tauro, of which he said he had been fascinated by the name and shared the pain of history; the small Calabrian town facing the sea, with citrus groves and orange blossom-scented air, was in fact razed to the ground in the Seventies, with 700 thousand plants, to make way for an elusive Fifth steel centre».
«Eranova was destroyed, doing everything to ensure that even the memory was buried along with the rubble», explained Abate, recalling the history that was removed and encountered by chance while preparing a book on migrants from the San Ferdinando slum. «I wanted to write it – he added – to save it in the memory and because it is very timely, if we think about the affair of the Bridge over the Strait… I would like it to be a warning to avoid the devastating mistake of that time, with the promise of a grandiose and of thousands of jobs.”
«The protagonists of the novel are two young university students who fight with all their strength, together with the elderly and women of the town, to stop the bulldozers and the project of calculated destruction, still recurring in places in Calabria that we have the duty to preserve . The audience present – we read in conclusion – listened carefully to Abate’s story, during a dense dialogue also focused on his particular history as a writer intertwined with his personal life, giving long applause to his reading, and talking with the author in the signature copies that followed”.
