Lottie Lomme
A while back, someone on social media complained that we all read so many male writers. I looked at my bookcase and realized she's right. About 80% of the books on my shelf are by a man. People from the literary world are (now) also aware of this. In the Netherlands, for example, there are the manifesto and the podcast of Fix this and in Italy you have the popular L'ha scritto una femmina.
I decided to do something about it too and changed course. From now on, 80% of the (Italian) books I read are by a woman! That's how I got to know a lot of Italian writers in recent years. Not all of them have been translated into Dutch, but each one is very worthwhile.
Fortunately, recently there has been increasing attention from Dutch publishers and translators for female Italian classics. Here are my recommendations. I have arranged them in order of their birth year, starting with the youngest writer.
1. Silvia Avallone (1984)
A popular writer. She lives in Bologna, where many of her books are set. I read Da dove la vita è perfectetta (translated as light of life) On Friendship, (translated as The friendship). They are a quick read but not very deep. It remains a bit on the surface, although they are certainly not unpleasant. Many of her books have been published by De Bezige Bij.
2. Ilaria Tuti (1976)
She wants to tell and bring to light the history of women. She does research in archives and tells true stories in her own way.
Publishers Wereldbibliotheek recently published her Stone flowers en Where the wind hits the earth. The books are not complicated and easy to read. She previously wrote thrillers, which have also been well received.
3. Teresa Ciabatti (1972)
The author is standing with her book It seemed beautiful (It looked like beauty) still on my own To Read list. She has been writing since 2002 and some of her books have also been filmed. It looked like beauty is about 'the destructive power of beauty'.
4. Michela Murgia (1972 – 2023)
Michela Murgia was not only a writer, but also an opinion maker. She sits on the left side of the political spectrum and, in addition to novels, also wrote a manifesto about fascism, which has also been translated into Dutch by Lannoo publishers.
Her book Accabadora (with the same title in the Dutch translation) caused quite a stir in Italy because the euthanasia debate started. She had been diagnosed with an incurable cancer.
In 2023 she still brought Three bowls out, which is as yet untranslated. She also had a nice podcast with biographies of remarkable women in the world. Morgana, in Italian, after the book of the same name. She passed away on August 10, 2023.
5. Ada D'Adamo (1967 – 2023)
She died the year she received Italy's most important literary prize, the Premio Strega. Her book Like air has not yet been translated at the time of writing this piece, but given the prize she has received, there is a good chance that this will happen. The autobiographical book is about a mother and daughter. Both have an illness and mother tells daughter their story.
6. Daria Bignardi (1961)
She became known in Italy for her presentation of reality shows such as Big Brother. Her books may therefore be a bit underrated. She's on Italian TV a lot, but I liked her books Books that ruined my life en L'amore che ti meriti definitely worth it.
The first is an autobiographical account of the role of books in her life (nice if you're a bibliophile), the second is about the impact of drug use on a family. Story of the mia ansia is also still on my own NTL list. That book is about how fear has been a driving force for her to achieve things in life. Her books are set in the Emilia-Romagna region.
7.Margaret Mazzantini (1961)
Writer and actress. She comes from an artistic family and in 2002 she also won the Premio Strega with Do not move, which has been translated into Dutch as Do not go away. Also brilliance en came into the world have been translated into Dutch.
Do not move en Venuto al mondo have also been filmed, but I think it is still a quest to watch those in the Netherlands or Belgium (with Dutch subtitles). Her books are not very political, but they are about characters who stand in the world and move in history, in a specific time and place.
8. Donatella di Pietrantonio (1962)
Many of her books are set in Abruzzo. Her books are in the Netherlands Thrown back (The arminuta) On My sister and the sea (Borgo south) translated by smaller Dutch publishers.
9. Alda Merini (1931 – 2009)
She has had a complicated life with multiple admissions to mental health clinics. She is best known as a poet and many of her poems are shared on social media. She wrote about the hard things in life and lived life itself in a poetic, inimitable and idiosyncratic way.
There is one anthology of her poems (Canticum evangelicum) bundled and translated by a Christian Dutch publisher, otherwise you have to make do with Italian or English. A few years ago I also translated some of her poems with Antoinette Sisto for Meander Magazine.
10. Oriana Fallaci (1929 – 2006)
Best known for her non-fiction, but this one is so well written that you will be completely sucked into her political stories. She was a journalist and interviewed the greats of the world.
She herself fell in love with a Greek dissident during the military dictatorship. She recorded his story A man, (A man) which has also been translated into Dutch. That too is an epic story about love and political beliefs.
11. Goliarda Sapienza (1924 – 1996)
She came from Catania in Sicily from a particularly politically oriented family on the extreme left, anarchist side. She has a whole series of books to her name, which often have an autobiographical slant.
For me she writes about freedom to make your own choices. Her characters are not very analytical, emotions and sensuality play a major role in her books. Only one of her books has been translated into Dutch: The art of pleasure, in 2009
12.Natalia Ginzburg (1916 – 1991)
An important Jewish writer. She came from an anti-fascist family and married Leone Ginzburg, who died in the war after being tortured in a German prison. Some of her works have recently been translated such as All our yesterdays en The little virtues.
Many of her other books have been translated into English. In 1983 she enters parliament for the communist party. She has also done a lot of translation work herself.
13. Elsa Morante (1912 – 1985)
In college I had to The island of Arturo read, which was recently translated (Arthur's Island). I dropped out, but I did struggle through the epic Lies and sorcery, which is also mentioned by Avallone in the book The friendship.
I thought it was an epic book, very strong in psychological intrigue. The book covers 3 generations in poverty in southern Italy and starts around the end of the 19e century. Her book The history (History) has also recently been translated.
14. Alba de Cespedes (1911 – 1997)
Quaderno proibito by Alba de Céspedes has recently been translated into Dutch as Forbidden writing by Meridiaan Uitgevers and translated by Manon Smits.
It has been described as a 'modern classic'. It is about a housewife in the years before the war with 2 young adult children somewhere in Northern Italy who one day buys herself a notebook and starts writing about her own life.
It's about a woman's self-awareness and having a place for yourself. The book is written in an accessible way and a nice insight into the psychology of a woman before WWII.
15. Fausta Cialente (1898 – 1994)
She is seen as one of the first Italian feminists. Her work Le quattre ragazze Wieselberger has so far remained untranslated, although this book also won the Premio Strega.
The book is set in Trieste and is, among other things, about the irredentismo (annexing foreign territories because of historical motives or the background of the inhabitants) and WWII. The author lived in Egypt and the United Kingdom for a long time and was also a translator.
16. Sibilla Aleramo (1876 – 1960)
Her book A woman is about the situation of women in Italy around the turn of the century to 1900. The book was translated by Orlando publishers in 2022. Her book is also strongly autobiographical. That is often said of books written by women, as I heard in the podcast of Fix this.
And indeed many of the above stories are labeled that way. When is something autobiographical? And does it matter if it's a good story?
17. Grazia Deledda (1871 – 1931)
She came from Sardinia. Stef Smulders has her masterpiece (masterpiece) canne al vento read and was enthusiastic, as you can read in his review. It is one of the oldest female works of Italian literature.
Are there no younger Italian female writers?
Now you may be thinking: what old writers all are, what about that young generation? That is a good question and the answer lies in a huge cultural difference between Italy and the Netherlands/Belgium and probably other northern European countries as well.
Here history is a footnote to the present. We love it now. In Italy, the present is a footnote to history. Often the present is explained by reference to the past.
Mastodons rule in Italy and there is still a great deal of respect and awe for literary critics. In the Netherlands people say more easily that they like 'pulp', in Italy everyone is raised with Dante Alighieri. And you can exchange ideas about Canto II of the Inferno with the plumber. The younger generation of female writers gets virtually NO media attention.
Because I also love modern writers myself, I became a member of the Facebook group Leggo Letteratura Contemporanea. Contemporary means contemporary. But that turned out to be about books from the past 100 to 150 years.
Somewhat disappointed, I hoped for an expert in the group, which still has about 183.000 members, who could help me with writers from generation X, Y or Z, who write nice and funny columns, for example. A bit Sylvia Witteman-, Hanna Bervoets-like. In style then, not in age. Nothing. I got zero on the bill.
In Italy the columns are written by the elderly, literary justified and approved by the critics. I would like to delve into it, but that will certainly need some more time, given the situation.
If you already have a tip for me for a writer from after 1984, I'd love to be recommended! Together we can bring a little better proportion to the bookshelf!
Comments