Current Projects... Forthcoming and In Progress
THE PERFORMANCE
by Claudia Petrucci
World Editions, In progress
(L'esercizio, La nave di Teseo, 2020
Claudia Petrucci’s debut novel, The Performance, published by La Nave
di Teseo as L’esercizio in early 2020, has garnered much praise and
attention; awarded the Premio Internazionale Flaiano (under 30), the book was
also a finalist for the Premio John Fante Opera Prima 2020 for an emerging
author’s first work. Striking in the novel is the aspect of manipulation by the
two male characters, who attempt to reinvent the protagonist, Giorgia, based on
their own projections of what they want her to be. Viewed from a feminist slant,
it is disturbing and unsettling: a powerful, riveting portrayal of influence and
control....
M. Il figlio del secolo
by
Antonio Scurati
Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, UK and
HarperCollins US, Forthcoming April 2021
(Bompiani, 2018)
Winner of the Premio Strega 2019
Antonio Scurati’s “M.,” a novel about the rise of the dictator, Benito
Mussolini, was on Italian best-seller lists for weeks. “In the Italian
imagination, Mussolini remains a kind of totem, a figure of great charisma, a
kind of perverse national father whom we have repressed,” Scurati said in an
interview. The unexpected popularity of “M” has provoked debate in Italy on
Mussolini’s legacy. Some say the book is a much-needed reminder of the evils of
fascism, particularly for young people. Jonathan Burnham, president and
publisher of the Harper division of HarperCollins called the book “a timely
investigation of how fascism can take root in a society.”
“A New Book About Mussolini Is Provoking a Debate Over His Legacy.”:
New York Times, Dec. 8, 2018
Il grande ritratto
by Dino Buzzati
NYRB Classics, In progress
(Mondadori, 1960)
Il grande ritratto is a 1960 novel by Dino Buzzati that tells the story of
a scientist who becomes entangled with a large intelligent machine in which the
woman he loves is reincarnated. From the opening pages the reader is drawn into
circumstances that are unknown to him when Ermanno Ismani, an unassuming
university professor, is summoned by the minister of defense to accept a
two-year, unspecified, top-secret mission at an indeterminate remote location: a
mysterious Center – a scientific laboratory of sorts – in a damp, cold,
inhospitable, military-like setting. What interested me about a retranslation of
Henry Reed’s Larger than Life (1962) was the opportunity to recast it in a
different light now that views on science fiction have evolved. In the
introduction to Mondadori’s 1981 edition (20 years after the book’s original
publication), Maurizio Vitta suggested that the work had been harmed by the
critics’ tendency to misunderstand it, instantly associating it with the general
current of science fiction prevalent at the time.
Game of the Gods
by Paolo
Maurensig
World Editions, Forthcoming January 2021
(Il gioco degli dei, Einaudi, 2019)
Poised between East and West, between reality and fiction, Game of the Gods is
the story of Malik Mir Sultan Khan,
the humble servant who for a brief moment became king.
An American journalist, stationed in Punjab in the mid-sixties, decides to meet
the man whom the gods or chance
endowed with a natural talent at chaturanga, the ancient Indian ancestor of
chess. Brought to the court of a nabob who
helps him perfect his style in the chaturanga, he is introduced to the western
version of the game so that he can humiliate
the British colonialists and show off his victories throughout Europe. A success
on the world stage of chess, his skills
eventually drag Malik into a strange game of warfare that will decide the fate
of the Second World War.
