Four out of five authors in the final of Witch Prize 2023, the high probability that a deceased writer will fight for victory and a small publisher will emerge victorious. Several news and surprises accompanied the final count of the votes for the prestigious literary award during live streaming on Raiplay. At the July 6 finals, they end up like this: ROssella Postorino with I limited myself to loving you (Fetrinelli), Ada D’Adamo with Come d’aria (Elliott) e Maria Grazia Calandrone with Where you done me (Einaudi) with 217, 199 and 183 votes respectively. On fourth place Andrew Canobbio with the night crossing (La Nave di Teseo) – 175 – and on the fifth Roman Peter with Stealing the night (Mondadori) – 167 votes.
It was easy to predict that the most coveted Italian literary prize would be a woman, as only four women writers were represented out of the dozen submitted so far. And that Canobbio survived is half a miracle for the more than halved boys, also because they were sixth and seventh Igiaba Sciego And Silvia Ballestra. In short, there is no longer the male chauvinist and male witch of the past. After all, the only two Strega titles won by women writers in the last twenty years are the one from 2003 a Melanie Mazzucco for life and Helena Janeczek for The Girl with the Leica in 2018.
As Canobbio waits to see the winner’s face in a month’s time, he doesn’t take offense. Let’s remember at least some historical dates that accompany the quintet. In the finale, Elliott goes down in history for the first time of the Premio Strega thanks to the novel Come d’aria. A small publishing company founded in 2007 that publishes an average of seventy volumes each year. The candidacy of Come d’aria from the Roman Theater of Benevento was presented by Elliott’s editor-in-chief, Loretta Santini, in place of the missing D’Adamo. The writer from Abruzzo died last April at the age of 55. In the novel, now in real danger of winning, D’Adamo described the painful and complex relationship between her and her daughter, who was born in 2005 and suffers from a rare brain defect.
Scrolling through the five, we remember that Romana Petri was already a finalist at the Strega in 1998 with Alle casevenire (Marsilio), that is, from the Umbrian Résistance told 25 years ago to the fantasy of the Little Prince of Saint-Exupéry, which was extensively in is told I stole the night tonight. Among the big names, Einaudi is in the final for the sixth time in a row The ship of Theseus confirms in his pirate autonomy the fifth final (and a win by Strega with Veronesi) in eight years of his life. It should be noted that both Postorino’s and Petri’s books have also had moderate sales, while the immense talent of Milanese poet Calandrone finally takes the form of a novel still about her mother after the magnificent Splendi come vita del 2021.
Finally, a few comments: the first concerns Stefano Coletta’s disastrous management of the cumbersome live broadcast (there were also greetings to the Mastella family); The second is that she regrets the exclusion of Gian Marco Griffi, author of The Railways of Mexico (Laureana), a rhapsodic, atypical, and imaginative novel. Joke of the evening signed by Igiaba Sciego: As she was on stage to launch her book, it started to rain and a bodyguard opened an umbrella for her to protect her from the rain, but she strenuously denied the kindness, claiming: “Keep the umbrella.” like that’s a colonial gesture.” In short: Sciego is wet, happy and decolonized.