(ANSA) - CAPRI, 03 OCT - "When I wrote this book, it was necessary to demonstrate that there was a shipwreck. Today, after all, what happened, is useless. Just look around, from America to Europe to China, to understand that the world is no longer working, that it is drifting and, probably, towards a shipwreck ".
This is how Amin Maalouf, the French-Lebanese writer among the immortals of the Academie Francaise, author of The crusades seen by the Arabs, Gli scali del Levante or With the rifle of the English consul, tells about his latest book, The shipwreck of civilizations, published in Italy by The ship of Theseus is awarded with the Malaparte 2020, the recognition that celebrates the 23rd edition and returns to Capri for the ninth year thanks to Ferrarelle Spa.
"Not an easy edition, in the midst of the pandemic", admits the soul of the Gabriella Buontempo Prize, in which the jury captained by Raffaele La Capria has chosen an author "symbol of the encounter between two cultures today protagonists in the world".
"Will the pandemic make us better? I think it is a consolation that humanity is in great need of", he reflects, arriving in Capri hand in hand with his wife Andrée, author of cookery books.
"We went through the lockdown in Paris, reading, writing," he says.
On a global and social level, however, "it's a shock that literally blew everything, every system.
So maybe, yes, it's possible that it will make us better."
On October 4, Maalouf will give a speech on the occasion of the award ceremony at the Certosa di San Giacomo. Meanwhile, just in these days, his new novel, Nosfreres inattendus (The unexpected brothers), was released in France.
"It is a story that I wrote before the pandemic - he anticipates - but in the end it is not far from our scenarios. Because there is a narrator and a strange phenomenon, the nature of which we do not understand, which has stopped the world".
(HANDLE).