Book presentation – “Ada” by Alessio Traversi – Vittoria Iguazu Editora

A girl lies unconscious in the school bathroom, with a wound on her forehead. It is from this scene that an investigation into the mysteries of adolescence begins, conducted by adults who, trapped in their roles – school, institutional, police – cannot push beyond feelings of guilt, frustrations, fatalism, rhetoric, and conventions. The result is a story of false leads and loneliness that, between farce and tragedy, between apocalyptic anxieties and aperitifs, intersect around Ada’s body, blending bureaucratic language, chemical reactions, and lyrical tensions.

“Ada” is a novel that, while paradoxically recalling certain elements typical of certain genres, deliberately resists classification within any one of them, being constructed on the deliberate choice to clash different styles and languages; a tragicomic poem from which only the framework remains and whose characters seem drained from the inside; a text constructed like a frame around a hole.

Alessio Traversi was born in 1973 in Livorno. He teaches literary subjects in high schools. For many years he has worked in the theater as a playwright and director within companies, schools, and prisons.