THEAt first he was Elsa Morante in 1957 with The island of Arturo (Einaudi). The last, in order, is Donatella di Pietrantonio, Winner of the Strega Prize and the Witch Younger 2024 with The fragile age (Einaudi). In the middle there are writers who have created unforgettable novels, such as Family lexicon (Einaudi) by Natalia Ginzburg, awarded in 1963; The words between us read (Einaudi) by Lalla Romano, who won in 1969. There was also among the winners Maria Bellonci, The founder of the prize and creator of the friends of Sunday, who won in 1986 a few months after his death with Private Renaissance (Mondadori), A biography of Isabella d’Este.
Thirteen: the bewitched number
Thirteen in all the writers who, since 1947 – year of his institution – have won the prestigious Strega prize: More than a prize, a real consecration to stars in the firmament of contemporary fiction. Some of them have become famous, their books were translated abroad and adapted for cinema; others we just remind them, but All, indiscriminately, gave us beautiful and split pages of life, helping us to understand who we are and what our place is in history, Even just in the family one.
The list of winning books
The island of Arturo by Elsa Morante (Einaudi), 1957
Family lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg (Einaudi), 1963
Poor and simple by Anna Maria Ortese (Vallecchi Editore), 1967
The words between us read by Lalla Romano (Einaudi), 1969
The four Wieselberger girls by Fausta Cialente (Baldini+Castoldi), 1976
Private Renaissance by Maria Bellonci (Mondadori), 1986
Passage in the shade by Maria Teresa Di Lasca (Feltrinelli), 1995
Dark by Dacia Maraini (Rizzoli), 1999
Don’t move by Margaret Mazzantini (Mondadori), 2002
Life by Melania Gaia Mazzucco (Einaudi), 2003
The girl with the Leica by Helena Janeczek (Guanda), 2018
Like air of Adamo (Elliot), 2023
The fragile age by Donatella di Pietrantonio (Einaudi), 2024
Maria Bellonci, the architect of post-war literary rebirth
We are after the Second World War. Italy is a pile of rubble, materials and social. In this exasperated climate, a woman sees the territory from which to start building in literature. This woman is called Maria Villavecchia, she is the daughter of Felicita Bellucci and Gerolamo Vittorio Villavecchia, a Piedmontese intellectual.
Maria Bellonci in a vintage photo. Source: Premiostrega.it
“In winter and spring 1944, friends, journalists, writers, artists, writers, people of every party united in the participation of a painful theme in the present and uncertain in the future began to gather. Then, after June 4, after the nightmare, friends continued to come: it is precisely an attempt to find themselves united to face despair and dispersion. ” – It tells about the prize, born with the aim of bringing together the frayed Italian intellectual community of the time and give it a new impulse.
The Strega Prize: a literary recognition like no other
Maria will marry the journalist Goffredo Bellonci, older than her twenty years. We are in 1928. Together with her husband, she will start thinking about A literary prize, which – his words – “nobody had ever imagined”.
One of the first images of Sunday friends. Among others, Maria Bellonci, Paola Masino, Libero Bigiazi, Aldo Palazzeschi, Alba de Cèspedes, Vitaliano Brancati and Anna Proclemer are recognized. Image source: Premiostrega.it
The dream of the visionary spouses becomes possible thanks to the partnership with the entrepreneur Benevento Guido Alberti, owner of the family business that produces the famous witch liqueur, That golden yellow liquid that the intellectuals tastned at home Bellonci during their Sunday meetings. It is Maria Bellonci herself who tells the genesis of the prize in the essay Like a story. The years of the Strega Prize (Publishing clubs).
Women and literature: Nadia Terranova’s opinion
A question is born spontaneously: why so far have the winners have been so few? It is perhaps still true what Maria Bellonci wrote in 1948 to the director of the newspaper The press, who made allusions to the alleged gallantry by some Sunday friends in supporting Anna Banti’s candidacy, author of a book on Artemisia Gentileschi? «There is still a lot to do for the recognition of the literary value of women’s writing. We have had to fight a lot and we are still fighting. ” – declares Nadia Terranova to Io Donna.
Nadia Terranova is the author of the book “What I know of you” (Photo by Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)
The author is on the podium of the 2025 edition with What I know of you (Guanda), who earned third place, immediately after Elisabetta Rasy. «I don’t like talking about female literature but of literature written by women, because I believe it is the most suitable expression. – underlines the writer – Literature should not have gender, yet the one written by women has its own specificity that derives from the marginality in which women have been relegated, Factor that, however, has allowed them to look at things with more originality and lucidity ».
The witch and women between family novels, emotions and disparity
These are books that speak of family constellations, stories that center the emotions and small and large existential dramas from which no one is exempt. For their peculiarity of telling the universe of feelings, it happens that the novels written by women are approached to the Romance genre, erroneously, as explained by Giovanni Solimine, president of the Bellonci Foundation: “It is a problem of perception by critics. This could explain why, although there was a strong presence of female works within the prize, the latter were underestimated. But things are changing. If in the past there has been a strong inequality, in the last decade we have had three winners “.
Things, therefore, are changing, and if until a few years ago there was a lot of attention to the pink quotas in cyquin, it seems that now less attention is paid to these aspects. This would testify that the gender gap is slowly balancing.
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