Paper factories

An anthology that retraces the history of Italian industrial literature, from the 1930s – a period when the literary genre acquired its own features and coherency – up to the 2010s. From Leonardo Sinisgalli and Carlo Bernari to Silvia Avallone and Antonio Pennacchi, through Ottiero Ottieri, Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Giovanni Testori, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Luciano Bianciardi, Elio Vittorini, Giorgio Caproni, Laura Pariani and several other great authors. The work is structured according to thematic chapters that narrate different historical periods and different protagonists in the world of factories: employees, entrepreneurs, labourers and intellectuals. The factory, narrated in these pieces selected by Giorgio Bigatti and Giuseppe Lupo, evolves over time from a grimy site, with its unpleasant smells of production materials and labourers' sweat, to a digital and technological factory, clean and sustainable, embodying a completely different concept of industrial production. A book that makes us rediscover a key feature of Italian identity – the factories that were at the heart of 20th-century industrial development – through a multi-voiced narration led by some of the greatest literary authors, a polyphonic exploration of their nuances and complexities, tensions and passions.

  Fabbrica di carta. I libri che raccontano l’Italia industriale (Paper factories. The books that narrate industrial Italy)
Curated by Giorgio Bigatti and Giuseppe Lupo
Laterza, 2013