The novel of the Sicilian writer extracts from a private history of the great themes of life, and asks them with a delicacy, a self-deprecating modesty and heartfelt tenderness that earned him the player participation and the approval of the international jury of Italianists.
"The book by Roberto Alajmo proves once again that literature is un'autoterapia that can fail even useful to others, when able to face opened its heart diseases. After forty years, the writer deals with the trauma that has marked his life, the suicide of forty-mother. Query memories, documents, photo, objects, all that it can help to decipher the puzzles on which it has always exercised the novel: the family, with its mysterious alchemy; relations between spouses, between parents and children, first united by biology, then dispersed in the sea of shadows, the unspoken, repressions and silences. It's up to maturity retrace the lost time, unravel the tangles, get to the bottom of painful and illuminating truths.
Everything moves since the last meeting, in the summer of '78 title. The parents separated, the young Roberto, who remained with his father, Mondello is with friends to prepare maturity, when the mother appears in the corner of a sunny street, on hold. She is tired, embarassed, content with a few words of convenience. It will be their last meeting. What happens in the three months following, before the police find yourself lifeless in his apartment?
Alajmo extracts from a private history of the great themes of life, and asks them with a delicacy, wisdom, a self-deprecating modesty and heartfelt tenderness that earned him the gratitude and reader participation. He performs and does not hide, and find the right fit to make an individual affair something that contributes to a better knowledge of the human ".
So writes Ernesto Ferrero, writer and President of the Jury, in the grounds with which the jury declared winner of the literary prize Alassio Hundred Books Roberto Alajmo with his novel "Summer of '78", published by Sellerio.
The jury, even this year, It was made up of a technical committee composed of the President Enrico Ferrero and Giulio Anselmi, Luigi Barlocco, Alberto Beniscelli, John Bogliolo, Franco Gallea, Franco Manzitti, World Lorenzo and Antonio Ricci; and a panel of distinguished Italianists teachers of Italian literature at renowned foreign universities: Martin McLaughlin (Oxford), Gennady Kiselev (Moscow), Michael Roessner (Munich), Maria de Las Nieves Muniz Muniz (Barcelona) e Cazalé Claude Bérard (Paris)
Roberto Alajmo was born in Palermo in 1959. Journalist, writer, playwright and professor of History of Journalism at the University of Palermo, from 2013 He is director of the Teatro Biondo, Main city prose stage. His books, Repertoire of Fools City of Palermo (Garzanti 1994), The god shoes Polyphemus and other Sicilian stories (Feltrinelli 1998), News of the disaster (Garzanti 2001), Heart Mother (Mondadori 2003), He was the son, (Mondadori 2005, from which it was derived the Daniele Ciprì film with Toni Servillo), Palermo is an onion (The third 2005), The first love is never forgotten, also wanting (Mondadori 2013), My Meat (Sellerio 2016).
"The choice was not easy - says Paola Cassarino, Councilor Charged Culture of the Municipality of Alassio - each novel has touched different strings of minds of those who witnessed the presentations that have taken place during this summer.
Giusi Marchetta, Lia Levi, Roberto Alajmo, Cristina Comencini and Rosella Postorino, in order of appearance, They were protagonists of five subsidiaries of deepening evenings guided interpretive experience of Prof. Franco Gallea. A single strand, that of the family and its values, but five different readings for historical era, context, development. E 'was really an incredible experience live these novels through the words of their authors ".
Appointment on September 1 when on the stage in Piazza Partisans will meet the kindness and simplicity of Gerry Scotti, the President of the Jury Ernesto Ferrero and of course Roberto Alajmo that once again he will undergo the crossfire of questions of Prof. Galle.
Note. his Palermoparla on line we recently talked about a striking presentation of the book of dear Alajmo at sunset of a day of celebration for the first year of activity of the touristic port Capo d'Orlando. We had appropriately pointed out that those considerations listen to author's voice had aroused unexpected feelings exposed in a series of interventions by those who were settled in chairs by the organization that had simulated a conference hall in the open air…
Di Roberto Alajmo, He met several times and when the writer cared press offices of sailing and he worked for the Rai, but even in casual encounters, the tender of the sudden kindness. Read the book – it will be a surprise – and you will know some more… (Germano Scargiali)