MI miss Ichela Murgia, we miss her. I’m not the only one who finds themselves thinking “I wonder what he would say at this political juncture?”. He would surely have found the right words, the ones that we have been missing for more than two years now.
I feel nostalgic for his exuberant intelligence and that surgical ability to anatomize contemporaneity, but above all I feel nostalgic for his lightness. Michela possessed that gift that I consider the highest quality for a human being, that is the ability to be deep and light at the same timean unsurpassed mix that made every conversation exciting, capable of instantly defeating boredom and rhetoric.
Impossible to follow her in all her passions, some of which I confess are truly extravagant for me like his transport for Korean k-pop, especially for the band BTS of which he collected gadgets and memorabilia.
Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
To give her a pleasant surprise I once delved into an incredible shop in Paris, a temple of that musical genre, hoping to blindly recover some relics for her collection. Finds that Michela welcomed with an almost childish joycompetently explaining to me what I had bought.
She liked and knew everything about Korean culture and I hope that in the paradise of great women where she will have found a warm welcome she will still be able to dedicate herself to her passion and perhaps in the form of a curious little spirit finally undertake the famous journey to the country she had dreamed of so much.
“The beauty of others” by Frances Cha (Astoria Edizioni)
This is why I was attracted to the debut novel by a young writer who perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed without Michela’s stories. The beauty of others (Astoria Edizioni) by Frances Cha is set in Seoul and tells a story of friendship between women, while revealing the cross-section of a little-known society. The protagonists accompany us into a world of extreme competitionin which the race to win a place in society is no holds barred and the obsession with external appearance is so widespread that plastic surgery is an everyday gesture almost like changing your nail polish.
Beauty is the key to success and the routine to obtain and maintain it is a necessary religious ritual to face the battle of life. Frances Cha knows the environment in which she moves her characters well and does not spare us the pain and frustrations of this harsh struggle for survival. What sweetens the lives of its protagonists are, as always, the bonds of sisterhood that manage to mitigate the most distressing bitterness.
All articles by Serena Dandini.
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