P.embroke University, North Carolina. The place where the lives of Laura, David and Sarah converge and where a conflict between passion and loyalty, love and friendship originates. Here begins the story of a triangle with an unexpected outcomewhich explores the meaning of couple relationships and which intersects with a real and literary journey in search of identity and roots, and of the right form of love for each one.
A journey through the dusty archives of the houses from Park Slope in Brooklyn to Antico Caffè San Marco in Trieste, on the roads of Croatia and Serbia up to the extreme borders of the old continent, following the course of the Danube, through Central Europe up to the territories of the Tolstoian genius.
They are the ingredients of the novel The time of nostalgia (Salani Le Stanze) by Catalan journalist Natàlia Romaní, making her debut in fiction with a book that traces the sentimental geography of a place and a time lost in memory, and of a fundamental concept: what is Europe, why is it literature that gives it identity.
A work against the tide, a novel-river crossed by real and imaginary characters, that in their departures and their returns they show us that it is right to accept our frailties, without claiming absolute happiness. We met the author in Milan.
Books to read: “Nostalgia is a utopian past” underlines Natàlia Romaní
The time of nostalgia: is it the original title?
In fact I had thought of it as a “story of nostalgia”. My editor, however, thought that “the time of nostalgia” was more impactful and in fact I have to agree with him because it gives a better idea of the present and of the contrast with the past. This title immediately makes us understand why we have arrived at this point and the utopian past that we have left behind where everything was predictable between values that no one questioned.
The fil rouge of the novel is the past.
Nostalgia is a concept very linked to age, to time. When in the backpack of life you have more past than future you carry that weight, like an impossible return, and everything becomes tied to a memory. At this moment nostalgia is a widespread feeling also on a general level. We are experiencing significant changes in the geography of Central Europe and a sort of loss of control over what happens. It is as if everything is slipping away from us. Individual and society experience the same loss in the world. Where the lack does not refer to a specific place, but to a time.
How was the novel born?
It’s the classic story of a triangle. And, perhaps, there is something autobiographical here. I am a person who falls in love with everyone and everything, friends, professors, people who, in general, know more than me and from whom I can learn something. Laura, David and Sarah appeared one day in my fantasy and I started “working” them. Michelangelo said that the Pietà sculpture was already there when he started creating it. The characters arrive, you know you want to talk about a feeling, the novel is inside a cloud until it asks you to start the journey.
What is your working method?
I start with a paragraph. If you have to find a similarity it’s like a crochet job. There are writers who check everything, look for information, Tolstoy himself spent twenty days watching a sunrise to understand exactly how to describe the birth of the sun. In my way of writing one thing leads to another, like “butterfly effect”. For the finale, I got stuck on a philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said he took the 5am train from London to Cambridge one day. I liked it and I wanted to take it back to conclude the novel.
You write by hand, is it a habit?
Writing by hand helps to fix emotions on paper. In my opinion the dialogues are better. It is as if the neurons are unleashed. On the computer I copy only what I have created on paper. Then I confess that I am crazy for paper note books, diaries, notebooks. Once in Japan I stumbled upon a four-story building full of pens, stationery, albums, papers of all kinds and I took everything. On paper the characters seem coherent to me. The story must also be coherent, not real, but possibly true and legitimate.
The locations of the novel range from Brooklyn to the Danube. What is the place of his heart?
I’ve lived in the Balkans for a long time and New York is vivid in anyone’s imagination, you just need to see a Woody Allen movie. I personally love Rome. Every time I see the Pantheon at sunset I reconcile with the beauty that exists in the world.
Info. Natàlia Romaní. The time of nostalgia. Salani, The Rooms. 18 euros.
More books to read
2 / Books to read. And now I’ll tell you about Cheikh
Why read it
The Masters of Happiness exist. They are magical creatures that have rained down on this earth to show us hidden roads and paths, and make life lighter even when
light is not. The Masters of Happiness have the extraordinary ability to transform into adventure the great and small trials that all, sooner or later, are called to face up to.
Furthermore, the Masters of Happiness are generous and attentive, and they never leave anyone behind. They are also very curious about the things of the world and with kindness and determination, they are community activators. Artists inside and out, that awaken us from the torpor of everyday life and monotony.
Cheikh Diattara is one of them. Many know him as a tailor with skilled hands, a sewer of Wax, African fabrics that in their designs tell stories, and stories
in the stories. Together with Valeria Zanoni, he has a small tailoring workshop in the heart of the Isola district, in Milan, a place of mixed fashion (the rigor of Italian design that blends with the thousand colors of wax) and a crossroads of encounters and relationships.
But Cheikh is much more and this book tells about his lives, through the words of Emanuela Nava and the illustrations of Anna Sutor, that allow us to “migrate” from one continent to another, from Africa to Europe, and from Dakar to Milan, touching almost firsthand the strength, tenacity and passion of a man who has transformed a handicap – the polio from which he has suffered from an early age – into an extraordinary springboard for existence.
Yes why Cheikh is also a basketball champion, and a musician, and a giver of hope. With those elegant and strong hands of hers, she cuts, shapes and sews. She throws the ball into the basket and shoots. She caresses the dijembè, her drum. Isn’t this the fate of the world?
Info. Cheikh, Master of Happiness. Beisler publisher.
3 / Books to read. Lenin walked on the moon
Why read it
Defeat death and resurrect the deadcreate living organisms, establish a worldwide communications network, unleash the power of the mind, manipulate both cosmic and atmospheric phenomena, colonize space …
Some of these projects have already been completed, others perhaps will soon be, but all have roots in Russia, nel movement called “cosmism”, a mixture of scientific research, metaphysics and mysticism. The first cosmist was Nikolaj Fëdorovič Fëdorov, eccentric philosopher who had correspondence with Dostoevsky and who set out to revive the dead.
Some time after the Bolshevik leaders, “builders of God”, they dreamed of creating a new religion and making human beings immortal. This was precisely the purpose, after all, when Lenin’s body was mummified. Other characters paved the way for the conquest of space already in the 1920s; once death is eliminated, in factthe Earth would become too small for humanity.
This side of Russian and Soviet culture, almost unknown outside his homeland, it will seem quite absurd to a Cartesian mentality. But cosmism still survives today and explains various aspects of present-day Russia, including its political choices. Furthermore, for some decades now cosmism has found a second home in Silicon Valley, with heirs such as Sergej Brin and Elon Musk.
Info. Michel Eltchaninoff. Lenin walked on the moon. Editions and / or. 17 euros.
4 / Books to read. Being nature
Why read it
If we read a newspaper, turn on the radio or television, if we browse the home of our social networks, we will easily know that floods, earthquakes, extreme droughts, landslides, tornadoes, storms are the order of the day all over the planet. Instead, what is often hidden from us is that it is our lifestyle that has destroyed the planet. Our consumption, our practices are unsustainable and we are all starting to pay the consequences. We are in the era of the Anthropocene, the current geological era in which we human animals (especially Western animals), with our hyperconsumption and lifestyles, have modified entire territories in a structural way, and polluted water, air and land, causing climate change without previous. Now we have to deal with all this.
Thus the author, Andrea Staid, in his introduction.
“The book wants to be not only a contribution to the understanding of a concept which is that of ecosystemic or multinaturalist plurality, but above all a manifesto of the awareness that to change the world from an ecological and social point of view, and to save us from disaster, a way is necessary different from looking and thinking about nature “.
Info. Andrea Staid. Being Nature. Utet. 15 euros.
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