Books, “Tales for a Year” by Dario De Marco

The usual cultural meetings organized by the Vespucci-Colombo Institute Library continue. On Friday, October 18, at 6pm, in the Aula Magna of the location at piazza Vigo, 1, the book “Novelle per un anno” by Dario De Marco, published by Wojtek, will be presented. Francesca Cordì, a teacher at the institute, will discuss with the author.

The event is organized in collaboration with Erasmo Libri.

“Novelle per un anno” is the project that Pirandello failed to complete: writing a story for each day of the year. Where the master of the Italian short story failed, De Marco, with a certain audacity, attempts the feat: a book of 365 tales (plus one for leap years).

However, a century has passed since Pirandello, during which everything has happened: avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes, postmodernism and social networks. Therefore, the novellas have become 9L: they have been pulverized, shrunk to subatomic level, dispersed in a thousand forms, exploded into nonsense. Inventions in miniature format, using the most diverse forms: flash science fiction stories, dialogues in the dark, fake reviews, cinematic subjects, diary pages penned by Alzheimer’s patients, zen koans, comics, haiku, photographs, combinatory poems, stories that only happen on social media. Protective deities: Manganelli, Monterroso, Davis, Charms, Atwood, Buzzati, and Cortázar.

Dario De Marco, a journalist, has published novels (“Non siamo mai abbastanza”, 66thand2nd, 2011), non-fiction (“Mia figlia spiegata a mia figlia”, Liberaria, 2014), essays (“Alla ricerca della pizza perfetta”, 66thand2nd, 2021), but has always written only short stories. “Storie che si biforcano” was released with Wojtek in 2021. “Novelle per un anno” will be his latest book.

INFO: biblioteca@vespucci.edu.it