Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
ANDI enter a random bookstore and see the shelf with the best-selling books. In first place Ada D’Adamo, Like air. According to Francesca Giannone, The Postman. At the third Aurora Thames, The surname of the women. I think that’s the ranking reserved for female writers.
In fourth place, however, is Antonio Manzini with Elp. On the fifth another woman, Cristina Cassar Scalia, with The band of carusi (perhaps we are exaggerating a bit with the Sicilian sagas, but you know, if Camilleri had been born in Domodossola or Thiene nobody would read it).
On the sixth A good place to stop by Matteo Bussola, who is a man but reminds us in his biographical note that he keeps an (interesting) column in the women’s weekly f by title A writer a woman.
Then there’s Michela Murgia, with her splendid Three bowls. So The Age of Evil by Deepti Kapoor, who is a woman. Like the English Tillie Cole, author of Give me a thousand kissesand Argentina’s Mercedes Ron, tenth with It’s my fault?
I know the objection. There is no literature for women and men; there is literature. History it is a masterpiece in itself, not because Elsa Morante wrote it; and the same can be said of The indifferent by Alberto Moravia.
Yet it remains significant that the most read books of summer 2023 are the work of writers. Anyone who works in the field knows that books are bought by women. The signatures are impressive: nine people out of ten are women, and the man very often specifies: “It’s not for me, it’s for my wife”, or my mother, or my daughter. It’s always been like this.
However, if today female readers meet female writers, it is an interesting sign, it’s an open dialogue, it’s a crossroads of sensitivity, it’s a growth of awareness. This obviously won’t stop women from reading men’s books as well. It would be interesting if the opposite also happened more often.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
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