Strenne, from Allende to Ferrante, many writers under the tree

The powerful voice of Isabel Allende and that of Margaret Atwood, Elena Ferrante and Melania Mazzucco. A Nobel Prize to be discovered in Italy, the Polish Olga Tokarczuk, and on the tenth anniversary of the death of Alda Merini a book that brings together the most significant poems of the last decade. Women writers dominate the scene in the Strens 2019.
A golden moment to make up for lost time, the Christmas holidays can also hold great surprises, and among those to put under the tree the graphic novel The Mahabaratha stands out, which truly deserves a special place.
Here is a selection of titles: - LUNGO PETALO DI MARE (FELTRINELLI) BY ISABEL ALLENDE. The story of a man and a woman on the run to survive the upheavals of twentieth-century history. Allende takes us from Spain to the end of the civil war to flee to France and from there to Chile, aboard the steamer hired by Pablo Neruda to transport more than two thousand Spanish refugees.
- TESTAMENTI (PONTE ALLE GRAZIE), BY MARGARET ATWOOD. Literary event of the year, the highly anticipated sequel to 'The tale of the handmaid' from which the much acclaimed TV series was taken, distributed in Italy by Timvision, takes us into the Gilead regime that has evolved: it is not more at the beginning, but in the middle period. And it's time for purges.
- THE BUGIARD LIFE OF ADULTS (E / O) BY ELENA FERRANTE. There are no Lila and Lenù, but the relationship between Giovanna, a twelve-year-old girl who lives in a house with many books, and the paternal aunt Vittoria who is the most intense and strong thing about this new novel. We are always in Naples, but also in that of the Alto and Vomero districts, and we follow the lies of the great, the crumbling of certainties, the separation of Giovanna's parents and a little exalting sexual initiation.
- THE ARCHITECTURE (EINAUDI) OF MELANIA MAZZUCCO.
The portrait of an extraordinary woman of the seventeenth century, Plautilla, the first architect of modern history that hides boldness and dreams to be able to realize the enterprise capable of redeeming a whole life: to build an original villa of delights on the hill overlooking Rome, designed , designed and executed by you.
- THE VAGABONDI (BOMPIANI) OF OLGA TOCARCZUK. Built in constellations is the novel with which, first Polish, won the International Man Booker Prize 2018. The journey, the freedom to move from one place to another, the time of those who never stand still, are the soul of the novel where to act as a guide is a storyteller who has had a great desire since childhood, to be on the move.
- VOICE OF MEAT AND SOUL (FRASSINELLI) BY ALDA MERINI. Carnality and transcendence in this choice of verses, from 2000 to 2009, taken from the books that Merini has entrusted in the last ten years of her life to her friend Arnoldo Mosca Mondadori, collected for the first time in volume. From Body of Love to the Poem of the Cross to The Flesh of Angels, to the Magnificat to the Overwhelming Eternally Alive.
- MARIA CALLAS, I, MARIA (RIZZOLI, PP 560, EURO 21). The Divine and the woman in a surprising self-portrait that returns her true, more intimate voice. We discover it in Maria Callas. 'Io, Maria' by director and photographer Tom Volf who collected his memoirs and a large collection of private letters, mostly unpublished, from 1946 to 1977.
- THE SECRET OF CHRISTMAS SONG (HARPER COLLINS) BY VANESSA LAFAYE. In perfect Strenna style, a small publishing case in England, this moving novel of friendship and solidarity brings us back to the atmosphere of Dickens's masterpiece telling us the story of one of his most mysterious characters, Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner. The author disappeared in 2018, before she could finish it and her best friend, Rebecca Mascull, took up the baton.
- THE MAHABHARATA (THE HIPPOCAMPO) BY JEAN-CLAUDE CAREER WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY JEAN-MARIE MICHAUD. The most extensive literary work in the world is finally available in a graphic novel that maintains the same narrative intensity and expressive force. It took over three years of great work by the cartoonist and cartoonist Jean-Marie Michaud, who illustrated the texts of the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, a friend of Luis Bunuel, in thousands of tables, to return the complex to us on 440 pages. labyrinthine "poem of the world". (HANDLE).