Third Edition 2017

FICTION ITALIAN WINNER

Andrea Inglese

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PARIGI E' UN DESIDERIO

Born and raised in Milan, our adolescent narrator has already developed the awareness of belonging to another place—Paris: an elected homeland where he can achieve his literary ambitions. A place with penniless artists and young bohemians in search of their place in the world. This place becomes the setting for all of his love stories—from narratives as a young man, telling of times in a small apartment in a remote arrondissement, to more mature recounts, describing his relationship with Hélène, the woman with whom he decides to share his future.These snapshots of his life in Paris and the woman he meets is the starting point for a reflection on the complexity of relationships and other existential themes. The narrator’s tone is always slightly disillusioned and the events are described with an ironic and irreverent style.
Thanks to the Prize the book has been translated in English by Jamie Richards and waiting for being published in the Unites States.
Andrea Inglese / Read Bio
NON FICTION ITALIAN WINNER

Antonella Tarpino

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PAESAGGIO FRAGILE

Paesaggio fragile. L’Italia Vista dai Margini reveals the lesser known areas of the Italian “outskirts” with different atmospheres, hidden landscapes never revealed in the common cartography. The book unveils alive voices, visions, and sounds of those fragile landscapes. However, the inevitable question exists—how can we give a future to these new and unchartered regions? Whether it be paintings or literature, the arts will help to shine a new light on these forgotten and humble places. Along the Maritime Alps valleys, the ancient Salt Roads of the Apennine, and the landscape of ancient buildings of the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea, this is a downtrodden story that emerges from the testimonies of mules, merchants, and street-hawkers. Returning to the memory reveals the ambiguous and murky relationship between past and future, which offers new interpretations to our land.
Thanks to the Prize the book has been translated in English by Ann Goldstain and waiting for being published in the Unites States.
Antonella Tarpino / Read Bio
FICTION AMERICAN WINNER

Jennifer Haigh

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HEAT AND LIGHT

Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: it sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas. To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn’t count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother’s skepticism or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter. Meanwhile his neighbors, organic dairy farmers Mack and Rena, hold out against the drilling—until a passionate environmental activist disrupts their lives.Told through a cast of characters whose lives are increasingly bound by the opposing interests that underpin the national debate, Heat & Light depicts a community blessed and cursed by its natural resources. This is a dispatch from a forgotten America—a work of searing moral clarity from one of the finest writers of her generation, a courageous and necessary book.
Thanks to the Prize the book has been translated in Italian by Maria Giulia Castagnone and published in Italy by Bollati Boringhieri with the title L’America Sottosopra.
Jennifer Haigh / Read Bio
NON FICTION AMERICAN WINNER

Anna Harwell Celenza

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JAZZ ITALIAN STYLE: FROM ITS ORIGINS IN NEW ORLEANS TO FASCIST ITALY AND SINATRA

Italian Style explores a complex era in music history, when politics and popular culture collided with national identity and technology. When jazz arrived in Italy at the conclusion of World War I, it quickly became part of the local music culture. In Italy, thanks to the gramophone and radio, many Italian listeners paid little attention to a performer's national and ethnic identity. Nick LaRocca (Italian-American), Gorni Kramer (Italian), the Trio Lescano (Jewish-Dutch), and Louis Armstrong (African-American), to name a few, all found equal footing in the Italian soundscape. The book reveals how Italians made jazz their own, and how, by the mid-1930s, a genre of jazz distinguishable from American varieties and supported by Mussolini began to flourish in Northern Italy and in its turn influenced Italian-American musicians. Most importantly, the book recovers a lost repertoire and an array of musicians whose stories and performances are compelling and well worth remembering.
Thanks to the Prize the book has been translated in Italian and published in Italy by Carocci Editore with the title Jazz all’italiana. Da New Orleans all'Italia fascista e a Sinatra..
Anna Harwell Celenza / Read Bio
2017 Edition

The 20 Candidates

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Italian Fiction

  • Andrea Bajani, Un bene al mondo - Einaudi, 2016
  • Andrea Inglese, Parigi è un desiderio - Ponte alle Grazie, 2016
  • Lorenzo Marone, Magari domani resto - Feltrinelli - Marzo 2016
  • Laura Calosso, La stoffa delle donne - SEM - Marzo 2017
  • Silvia Avallone, Da dove la vita è perfetta - Rizzoli - Marzo 2017
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Italian Non-Fiction

  • Stefano Bartezzaghi, La ludoteca di Babele - Utet - 2016
  • Isabella Guanzini, Tenerezza, Ponte alle Grazie - 2017
  • Ivano Dionigi, Il presente non basta - - Mondadori - 2016
  • Antonella Tarpino, Paesaggio fragile - Einaudi - 2016
  • Jean Talon, Incontri coi selvaggi - Quodlibet - 2016
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American Fiction

  • Maria Semple, Today Will be Different - Little, Brown & Company - 2016
  • Anuk Arudpragasam, The Story of a Brief Marriage - Flatiron Bookse - 2016
  • Fanny Howe, The Needle’s Eye - - Graywolf Press - 2016
  • Jennifer Haigh, Heat & Light - Ecco, HarperCollins - 2016
  • Peter Ho Davies, The Fortunes - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 2016
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American Non-Fiction

  • Webb, Heather, Dante’s Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman - Oxford University Press - 2016
  • Craig A. Monson, Habitual Offenders - Flatiron Bookse - 2016
  • Susanna Berger,A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy - - University of Chicago Press - 2016
  • Anna Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra - Cambridge University Press - 2017
  • Selena Daly, Italian Futurism and the First World War - Univ of Toronto Press - 2016