Sandro Veronesi, 'The hummingbird'? 'My best friend'

Sandro Veronesi set the record, achieved so far only by Paolo Volponi, of winning two Strega Awards, in 2006 with 'Calm chaos' and 14 years later, with 'The hummingbird' awarded with 200 votes on 2 July, on a final evening marked from the pandemic, without the general public, with masks and distances to the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia, in Rome. But the trail of positive things that brought this lucky novel, which sold over 100,000 copies, goes far beyond that.
    "Isn't it exceptional that Teseo's ship, until last year a small publishing house and now no longer, wins the Strega after less than five years of life? It is to Umberto Eco that we have to say thank you, because he knew he had not yet a long time before him when he founded it and today he could have seen all this "he says to ANSA Veronesi after the victory and does not want to stop on his two Witch Awards. "At the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia there were my two literary fathers: Paolo Repetti who when he was in Theoria published my first book and Gian Arturo Ferrari who asked me to move to Mondadori. Then there was Fandango Libri, founded 20 years ago in my garage and La Nave di Teseo that I helped found. And in the sextine there was a book, 'Febbre' by Jonathan Bazzi, which I quote in 'Il hummingbird'. It was an experience that I will have to reflect on with my analyst "explains Veronesi.
    However, "the prize is not the one given to me. To win is the book and 'The hummingbird' was lucky from day one. He had a consensus that all my other books didn't have," he says. But how do you explain all this success for the story of a whole life, that of Marco Carrera, who like the hummingbird puts all its energy to stay still, hit a little more than normal by painful things? For a novel that descends in a powerful way to the roots of that energy that annihilates and revives, which tells us about going back and forth in time the loss and love, the search for oneself, psychoanalysis, dreams, symbols , with the family and all its mythologies at the center? "I don't know why and I don't care. It doesn't help me to know. I prefer to think that it's luck, that it's something that happens to those who give it their all and it happened to me. With 'Calm chaos' it was different. 'The hummingbird' had the consent of all types of readers. It may be a mistake but I keep the praise. And just because the book had all this favor I thought it could deserve the prize most important in Italy "says Veronesi who wrote it in five years differently than usual. "I totally entrusted myself to my desire to write. Like when you tell your life to a person you care about. You go back and forth in time, you say what you want to say and so I wrote what I wanted to write. And it was a bit daring, sometimes I woke up at night but it was a very rewarding experience. And I didn't have to move a chapter. "
    But how much of Veronesi is in Marco Carrera? "There is the year of birth, 1959. The very different thing from me is his hummingbird nature, he is one who remains, who keeps fighting. I am a boy from the 70s when the myth was change. Carrera is my opposite and I feel attraction for him, I was pleased to be in his company. I would have loved to meet someone like this, he would have been my best friend. I would have taught him to move a bit and he would have helped me to have a little judgment, "explains the author of the novel, who will perhaps have a film transposition, as had happened for 'Calm chaos', which has become a film with Nanni Moretti. "There is already an option to make a film, but I can't put my mouth into it. Moravia told me that you should never collaborate on the script of a film from your own book, you risk being in the way" says Veronesi who now is preparing for a tour of presentations with the first appointments, on 4th July at 9 pm in Pavia, on the fourth evening of the Milanesiana by Elisabetta Sgarbi and on 9 July at the Festival Il Libro Possibile in Polignano (Bari). "What we are experiencing is the thing of a dead time which can be replaced by better times if today's minors realize that they must act immediately", underlines Veronesi who in 'Il Colibri' looks to the future and to the new man who in this case is a woman.
    And of the Coronavirus experience for writers he says: "Literature plunges where it pleases." He is now writing "a screenplay with Edoardo De Angelis for his film on Salvatore Todaro, a WWII submarine commander". (HANDLE).