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Books selected for you

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  • 07 February 2025 The Gio Ponti Lab A man of many talents, Gio Ponti was one of the most influential Italian architects and intellectuals of the twentieth century. The volume published by Quodlibet seeks to ... +
  • 07 February 2025

    The Gio Ponti Lab

    A man of many talents, Gio Ponti was one of the most influential Italian architects and intellectuals of the twentieth century. The volume published by Quodlibet seeks to capture the wide range of his interests and works through eight essays, grouped into four thematic sections: contributions to magazines and newspapers, graphic design and illustration, architecture, and product design. Ponti’s creative approach has been likened to that of a craftsman, for he applied a common methodology to different materials in his design workshop, which inspired the title of the book. A striking example of his multidisciplinary vision is the Pirellone, or Pirelli Tower, examined in the essay by Fulvio Irace. Gio Ponti oversaw not just the structural design—which was part of his broader vision for a vertical Milan—but also every interior detail, meticulously calibrating the spatial functions and relationships, lighting, acoustics, and furnishings to create a seamless interaction between inside and out. Each floor was conceived with the needs of its future occupants in mind. His architecture was always socially driven, shaping urban landscapes in order to meet the needs of the community.

    Officina Gio Ponti. Scrittura, grafica, architettura, design
    Eds. Manfredo di Robilant and Manuel Orazi
    Quodlibet, 2023

    The Gio Ponti Lab
  • 09 December 2024 The Panettone Was Never Enough Dino Buzzati was no fan of Christmas. He disliked the festivities, the sham goodwill dusted off for just one day a year, and the consumerism that had increasingly ... +
  • 09 December 2024

    The Panettone Was Never Enough

    Dino Buzzati was no fan of Christmas. He disliked the festivities, the sham goodwill dusted off for just one day a year, and the consumerism that had increasingly become a feature of this “holiday” since the post-war economic boom. And yet, despite this aversion, he devoted many writings to Christmas. The posthumous collection entitled Il panettone non bastò, first published by Mondadori in 2004, brings together thirty-three such pieces, which originally appeared in the Corriere della Sera and other newspapers from the 1930s onwards. Edited by Lorenzo Viganò, the anthology features a series of articles, fairy tales, stories, and poems. These include Buzzati’s childhood recollections, wartime correspondence, an illustrated fairy tale, a poem about Baby Jesus, musings on spirituality, reflections on gift-giving, and insights into the importance of children’s imagination. The title story is set during the war, where the protagonist attempts to arrange a dinner on Christmas Eve as a brief reprieve from the horrors of the outside world and of the war. This fragile hope is shattered when he realises that “despite the panettone, it turned out to be just another day, with the same awful, wretched, resigned, and neurasthenic expectancy, just like all the other days of the war.” Buzzati’s writings are always intense, sometimes tender and sometimes bitter, and they capture the magic of Christmas in spite of all its contradictions.

      Il panettone non bastò
    Dino Buzzati
    Mondadori, 2004

    The Panettone Was Never Enough
  • 25 November 2024 Two Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band is a novel that defined a generation. The generation of those who came of age in the 1990s and who fell in ... +
  • 25 November 2024

    Two

    Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band is a novel that defined a generation. The generation of those who came of age in the 1990s and who fell in love with the story of Alex and Aidi, first in the pages of the book and later on the big screen. Enza Negroni’s 1996 film adaptation featured a soundtrack filled with pieces by some of the most iconic Italian bands and musicians of the time, including C.S.I. and Marlene Kuntz. Now, thirty years after the novel first came out, Enrico Brizzi has penned a sequel that picks up the threads of the protagonists’ lives. Alex is picking up the pieces of his life as he grapples with his friend Martino’s tragic suicide and Aidi’s departure. She is now in Pennsylvania, on a year-long cultural exchange. Brizzi takes us back in time, evoking nostalgia for those who lived through those years and piquing the interest of those who came later. The sequel revisits the days of the Tangentopoli “bribesville” inquests and the mafia massacres, InterRail journeys across Europe, and slower forms of communication, when one waited weeks or months for a reply to a letter. And, once again, music plays a pivotal role, reverberating to the characters’ emotions. Manu Chao—who makes a cameo in the book, meeting Alex in Paris—joins The Cure, Nirvana, and others in forming an accompaniment that plays in readers’ minds as they turn the pages.

    Two
    Enrico Brizzi
    HarperCollins, 2024

    Two
  • 08 November 2024 Bambino Mattia Gregori, known in Trieste as “Bambino”, is a former fascist and the city’s most brutal Blackshirt, who left a trail of death in his wake. Alongside Mattia, ... +
  • 08 November 2024

    Bambino

    Mattia Gregori, known in Trieste as “Bambino”, is a former fascist and the city’s most brutal Blackshirt, who left a trail of death in his wake. Alongside Mattia, at the centre of Marco Balzano’s latest novel is Trieste, a city on the margins, a place that shifts identities fluidly, and one that endures years of relentless upheaval and violence, from Fascism to Nazism, followed by a brief period of Communism. Born in 1900, “Bambino” experiences a childhood scarred by abandonment: his brother leaves for America, his closest friend deserts him, and he learns that the woman who raised him is not his biological mother. A relentless fury rises up within him, an intense anger not easily subdued. Drawn into the ranks of the Blackshirts, he is swept along by a chain of events that spiral into the Second World War, the Nazi occupation, the Yugoslav takeover, and ultimately, the tragedy of the Foibe massacres. After Resto Qui, Balzano returns to historical fiction, probing the limits of the human soul, as well as of history and the effect it has on individuals and on their personal choices. And to do this, he creates a fierce, hardened protagonist who creates an indelible impact on the reader.

    Bambino
    Marco Balzano
    Einaudi, 2024

    Bambino
  • 14 February 2025 Phileas’s Fortune To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we revisit a timeless favourite by the journalist and children’s author Agnès de Lestrade, beautifully illustrated by Argentine artist Valeria Docampo. An international bestseller, ... +
  • 14 February 2025

    Phileas’s Fortune

    To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we revisit a timeless favourite by the journalist and children’s author Agnès de Lestrade, beautifully illustrated by Argentine artist Valeria Docampo. An international bestseller, this enchanting tale has been translated into thirty languages and has won both the Prix Papillotes 2010 and the Prix Littéraire de la Citoyenneté 2010. Little Phileas is in love with the lovely Cybelle. He longs to tell her “I love you,” but he doesn’t have enough coins in his piggy bank. The wealthy and arrogant Oscar, on the other hand, has no trouble declaring to the little girl that one day he will marry her. You see, in their world, words are a luxury, and spoken only by those who can afford to buy them. Every word has a price, and the most important ones come at a steep cost. This means that the rich can say whatever they wish, while the poor must make do with the leftover words, which often don’t really convey their feelings. But the words of love, as this story so beautifully reminds us, are the simplest, like “cherry… ruby… chimes!”, which reach directly to the heart. Will Phileas find a way to win Cybelle’s heart? Phileas’s Fortune is a lovely story, filled with poetic beauty and a message that is as relevant as ever: words are of immense value, and they have the extraordinary power to set us free.

    Reading age: from 4 years old

    La grande fabbrica delle parole
    Agnès de Lestrade, illustrations by Valeria Docampo
    Magination Press, 2010
     

    Phileas’s Fortune
  • 27 January 2025 A Daughter’s Gift of Love This autobiographical novel recounts the tragedy of the Holocaust. One of the books on the subject most widely read in schools, it was written by Trudi Birger with ... +
  • 27 January 2025

    A Daughter’s Gift of Love

    This autobiographical novel recounts the tragedy of the Holocaust. One of the books on the subject most widely read in schools, it was written by Trudi Birger with the help of her editor, Jeffrey M. Green. Published in 1992, it has been translated across the world, and in Italy it won the Premio Andersen in 2005 in the over-12 category. We are reviewing this book on Holocaust Remembrance Day, as it offers a perspective of great emotional impact in the true story of a young girl. It is told in the first person in a simple but intense style that speaks directly to the heart. Trudi is torn from her comfortable life in Frankfurt, with its elegant tea dances, and thrust into the Kosvo ghetto. At sixteen, she is deported with her mother to the Stutthof concentration camp. For five years, she endures the horrors of the extermination camp—hunger, cold, humiliation, and the inhuman cruelty of the soldiers—escaping death at the very door of the cremation furnace. Yet amid all the horror, a force greater than despair sustains her: an unbreakable bond with her mother. Despite the nightmare she is living through, Trudi never stops hoping, dreaming, and believing in life, in a future. And she never stops dreaming: those steaming cups of hot chocolate that warmed and pampered her childhood return each night to the concentration camp, reminding her of the warmth and love of her family. It is this inner strength and the values instilled within her, that ultimately save her. The story does not end on the last page of the book, for Trudi Birger survived the horrors of the Shoah and, after the war, she settled in Jerusalem. Here, together with her large family, she devoted her life to helping the poorest children—regardless of ethnicity or religion—until she passed away in 2002.

    Reading age: from 11 years

    Ho sognato la cioccolata per anni
    Trudi Birger
    Pickwick, 2013

    A Daughter’s Gift of Love
  • 23 January 2025 The Giant’s Daughter Layana is a little girl who lives in a grand villa in Vicenza during the second half of the eighteenth century. Her father is a giant—not the fearsome ... +
  • 23 January 2025

    The Giant’s Daughter

    Layana is a little girl who lives in a grand villa in Vicenza during the second half of the eighteenth century. Her father is a giant—not the fearsome kind from fairy tales, who devour children and terrorise the villagers, but a kind and loving giant who dotes on her endlessly. He makes sure she has everything: servants, elegant dresses, exotic animals, and glittering jewels. For her twelfth birthday, he gives her twelve wonderful gifts, each more splendid than the last. But the one thing that is missing is what Layana wants most: to be able to go out and see the world. Indeed, her father has never allowed her to go outside—to protect her, he says—because the outside world is a dangerous place, and the people are bad. But Layana’s curiosity is too powerful to contain. One day, she defies his warnings and manages to get out, only to uncover a secret that will change her life forever. Ilaria Mattioni weaves a fairy tale that is both melancholic and comical, tender yet tragic, inspired by the legend of the beautiful Villa Valmarana, renowned for its magnificent frescoes by Tiepolo.

    Reading age: from 10 years

    La figlia del gigante
    Ilaria Mattioni; illustrated by Kalina Muhova
    Feltrinelli, 2024

    The Giant’s Daughter
  • 23 January 2025 A Story of Sea, Sky and Fear From the poet and writer Vivian Lamarque comes an extraordinary tale that introduces children to the themes of migration and displacement. A book that has rightfully earned its ... +
  • 23 January 2025

    A Story of Sea, Sky and Fear

    From the poet and writer Vivian Lamarque comes an extraordinary tale that introduces children to the themes of migration and displacement. A book that has rightfully earned its place among the finalists of the 2025 Premio Campiello Junior in the 7–10 age category. At the heart of the story is a little girl about whom nothing is known—neither her name nor her age, nor where she is from or why she lives alone in a tiny house perched atop the main mast of a ship. We follow her life as she slowly forms bonds with a friendly orange cat, a lovely white seagull, and a little boy who visits her at the port, whistling as he comes. But we also see her as she struggles with loneliness and fear of the sea and the dark nights. The author is always with us, taking us directly into the narrative, where she gives a name to each of the characters: Alberella, Gatito, Gabb, Fischio. And then, one stormy night, familiar sounds rise from the sea—vowels that are cries for help. A small hand breaks through the waves, and then a little arm. It is that of a little girl, the sole survivor of a boat laden with migrants, which has capsized, her entire family dragged down beneath the waves. Her name is Nila. Now with her new friend, Alberella rediscovers her own voice, her identity, and her memory. She reconstructs her own story as “a little girl who came from the sea”. The tale ends in an embrace of welcome and solidarity by Alberella and all her friends. The book concludes with a moving letter from the author to all children—a message of hope for a better world where no child will be lost to the sea, because today’s children will be tomorrow’s adults and they will make sure that no one is ever lost. A touching and poetic declaration of love and trust towards humanity, towards children, towards everyone.

    Reading age: from 8 years

    Storia con mare, cielo e paura
    Vivian Lamarque, illustrations by Nicola Gardini
    Salani Editore, 2024

    A Story of Sea, Sky and Fear

From the world of books

Events and fairs
literary anniversaries
  • 02 December 2024 The Number Devil How can maths be turned from nightmare into dream? The magic is achieved in The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, one of Germany’s most celebrated contemporary literary ... +
  • 02 December 2024

    The Number Devil

    How can maths be turned from nightmare into dream? The magic is achieved in The Number Devil by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, one of Germany’s most celebrated contemporary literary figures. Published in 1997 as his first work for children and adolescents, the book became an overnight international bestseller, and has been translated and republished in numerous editions ever since. Twelve-year-old Robert hates mathematics and is even afraid of it. He is not helped in this by his boring teacher, who is incapable of making it seem either useful or appealing. But one night, in the realm of dreams, Roberto meets the Number Devil: a fiery little red gentleman who takes him on a twelve-night journey through the mesmerising land of numbers. Step by step, the boy is drawn ever deeper into the magical world of powers, square roots, prime numbers, and theorems. Robert is inducted into the ranks of the Number Apprentices, earning a star-adorned medallion, which he finds around his neck when he awakens in the real world. What then happens at school over the following days goes without saying. With its amusing language and its playful use of sounds and meanings, as well as a narrative structure rooted in the thrilling whirl of initiation, mathematics becomes a fascinating fairy-tale world for the reader. Already a classic for Generation X, The Number Devil has now reached Generation Alpha, who can experience maths as being within everyone’s reach and not as a privilege reserved for the few. And today, more than ever, this is sorely needed.

    Reading age: 10+

    Il mago dei numeri. Un libro da leggere prima di addormentarsi, dedicato a chi ha paura della matematica
    Hans Magnus Enzensberger, illustrations by Rotraut Susanne Berner
    Einaudi, 2014

    The Number Devil
  • 23 September 2024 Campiello 2024 Awards Ceremony The prize-giving ceremony for the sixty-second edition of the Premio Campiello took place on Saturday 21 September, at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The event was hosted ... +
  • 23 September 2024

    Campiello 2024 Awards Ceremony

    The prize-giving ceremony for the sixty-second edition of the Premio Campiello took place on Saturday 21 September, at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The event was hosted by Francesca Fialdini and Lodo Guenzi, with musical intermissions by Luca Barbarossa, and broadcast live on RAI 5. The novel chosen by the Jury of Three Hundred Readers was “Alma” by Federica Manzon, published by Feltrinelli. The author received the “Vera da Pozzo”, a replica of a traditional Venetian puteal (well-head) and the emblem of the prize, symbolising the “Campiello”. For more details about the winning book, you can watch the interview conducted by the Pirelli Foundation on this page.

    Campiello 2024 Awards Ceremony
  • 12 September 2024 pordenonelegge The 25th edition of pordenonelegge, organised by Fondazione Pordenonelegge.it, opens today at the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone. Running from 18 to 22 September, the festival will feature over 600 Italian and international authors in ... +
  • 12 September 2024

    pordenonelegge

    The 25th edition of pordenonelegge, organised by Fondazione Pordenonelegge.it, opens today at the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone. Running from 18 to 22 September, the festival will feature over 600 Italian and international authors in more than 300 events across the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. This year’s guests include the Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, Enrico Brizzi with the long-awaited sequel to Jack Frusciante è uscita dal gruppo, Gianrico Carofiglio, Chiara Valerio, Donatella Di Pietrantonio, and Maurizio Maggiani. The theme of sport will take centre stage in this edition, which will see the tennis champion Adriano Panatta in a conversation with the producer and director Domenico Procacci and the journalist Stefano Semeraro. There will also be a special event curated by Massimo Passeri and Antonio Bacci. Arrigo Sacchi, Federico Buffa and Fabrizio Gabrielli, Riccardo Pittis and Marino Bartoletti, among others, will all be taking part. As part of the pordenonelegge programme, on Friday 20 September at 9 p.m., the headquarters of Confindustria Alto Adriatico will host a discussion on our latest editorial project, The Sports Workshop, published in June by Marsilio Arte. This event, organised by the Pirelli Foundation, will feature Antonio Calabrò and Luigi Garlando, a writer and journalist for La Gazzetta dello Sport. Together, they will look at sport as a form of participation, involvement, community, and civic engagement. It will be a unmissable opportunity to reflect on the many facets and manifestations of sport, including what goes on behind the scenes and in the world beyond the performance.

    pordenonelegge
  • 03 September 2024 Festivaletteratura The twenty-eighth edition of Festivaletteratura will be held from Wednesday 4 to Sunday 8 September 2024. The Festival will return to fill the squares of Mantua with a ... +
  • 03 September 2024

    Festivaletteratura

    The twenty-eighth edition of Festivaletteratura will be held from Wednesday 4 to Sunday 8 September 2024. The Festival will return to fill the squares of Mantua with a calendar full of events. Over 300 sessions in 5 days, where, thanks to the power of literature, we will question wars and democracies, compare different generations, and explore ancient peoples and distant cultures. There will also be discussions on the body and artificial intelligence. The international guests this year include: Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner Nathan Thrall, 2023 Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch Mona Awad, Emmanuel Carrère, Olivia Laing, Deborah Levy, Tobias Wolff, Joël Dicker, Peter Burke, Jessa Crispin, Michael Ignatieff, David Quammen and Richard Sennett. To see the full programme click here.

    Festivaletteratura
  • 10 February 2025 Bertolt Brecht Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg on 10 February 1898 and died in East Berlin on 14 August 1956. One of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century, ... +
  • 10 February 2025

    Bertolt Brecht

    Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg on 10 February 1898 and died in East Berlin on 14 August 1956. One of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century, Brecht was forced into exile in 1933 following Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazi regime’s hostility towards his work. Among his most significant plays are The Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage and Her Children, as well as Life of Galileo, which also served as inspiration for We Are, a corporate short film by the Pirelli Foundation, produced by Muse Factory of Projects.

    Bertolt Brecht
  • 04 February 2025 Patricia Highsmith Born in Fort Worth, Texas, on 19 January 1901, Patricia Highsmith passed away in Aurigeno, Canton Ticino, Switzerland, on 4 February 1995. Highsmith wrote many psychological thrillers, and ... +
  • 04 February 2025

    Patricia Highsmith

    Born in Fort Worth, Texas, on 19 January 1901, Patricia Highsmith passed away in Aurigeno, Canton Ticino, Switzerland, on 4 February 1995. Highsmith wrote many psychological thrillers, and gained widespread recognition through the film adaptations of her works, including Strangers on a Train, famously brought to the screen by Alfred Hitchcock, and the series of films inspired by her Tom Ripley novels.

    Patricia Highsmith
  • 16 October 2024 Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024 From 16 to 20 October, the Frankfurter Buchmesse, now in its 76th edition, will be held in Frankfurt. One of the world's leading book fairs, it is the ... +
  • 16 October 2024

    Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024

    From 16 to 20 October, the Frankfurter Buchmesse, now in its 76th edition, will be held in Frankfurt. One of the world's leading book fairs, it is the most important in Europe in terms of literary rights sales. In keeping with tradition, each year the fair features a Guest of Honour country, and in 2024, after a 36-year hiatus, it will be Italy’s turn. Italy will be represented in a pavilion designed by the architect Stefano Boeri, under the theme "Roots in the Future", devoted to Italian culture. Here Pirelli will showcase its corporate culture, presenting its story through books and videos. The display will highlight the company’s core values: innovation, technology, and art, as well as its multidisciplinary corporate culture. A series of Pirelli publications will be on show, from those of the Pirelli Foundation to the Pirelli HangarBicocca catalogues, a commemorative book marking 50 years of The Cal, and the company's Annual Reports. Over the years, many prominent Italian and international authors have contributed to these works, including Emmanuel Carrère, Javier Cercas, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Adam Greenfield, Lisa Halliday, Nicola Lagioia, Joe Lansdale, Javier Marías, Ian McEwan, John Joseph "J.R." Moehringer and many others.

    Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024
  • 08 October 2024 Marina Ivanovna Cvetaeva Marina Ivanovna Cvetaeva was born in Moscow on 8 October 1892 and died in Yelabuga on 31 August 1941. A Russian poet and writer, she began writing poetry ... +
  • 08 October 2024

    Marina Ivanovna Cvetaeva

    Marina Ivanovna Cvetaeva was born in Moscow on 8 October 1892 and died in Yelabuga on 31 August 1941. A Russian poet and writer, she began writing poetry at the age of six, creating compositions in Russian, French, and German. During Stalin’s regime, Cvetaeva moved to Paris, only returning to Russia in 1939, where she was soon sent to a labour camp. A few years later, she took her own life. Her works were rehabilitated in the 1960s, and today Cvetaeva is regarded as the greatest exponent of twentieth-century Russian Symbolist poetry.  

    Marina Ivanovna Cvetaeva