If you are in a READING
MOOD this season …
here are some LOVED ones!
Nadia Terranova
FAREWELL, GHOSTS
What does it take to come home again?
Farewell, Ghosts narrates the story of Ida, a thirty-six-year-old woman who lives in Rome and makes a living by writing stories for the radio. One morning, she receives a call from her mother, asking her to come home to Sicily to help prepare their house for sale. Ida, while sorting many objects from her childhood, will be forced to face many ghosts from her past, such as the disappearance of her father: a trauma she still hasn’t recovered from.
Farewell, Ghosts is a novel about untold feelings, fragile balances and deep love. Suggested if: you haven’t been visiting home for a while.
Donatella di Pietrantonio
A GIRL RETURNED
“Mom” is one of the first words a child learns to say. But for the main character of this brilliant book, the word has a different meaning. Abandoned at the age of 6 months from her biological family, and roughly sent back to her family of origin at the age of 14, this is the story of a young girl who learns to deal with abandonment very soon. Like she declares: “I am an orphan with two living mothers. One had given me up with her milk still on my tongue, the other had given me back at the age of thirteen.”
A Girl Returned is a novel about affection, motherhood and insecurity. A powerful story capable of bringing the reader far, far away.
Suggested if: You are looking for something strong but beautiful.
Mariangela Gualtieri
BEAST OF JOY
Mariangela Gualtieri is one of Italy’s most admired lyrical poets. This is a collection of selected poems written with honesty and compassion thanks to the author’s capacity of expressing incandescence but also fragility. Gualtieri has a deep sense of the world that surrounds her and she’s extremely passionate in narrating it giving birth to a natural religion of all existing things.
Suggested if: you need something on your bedside table to keep you company
Why is our BOOK SELECTION OF THE SEASON
dedicated to WOMEN?
The 25th of November is the International day for the elimination of violence against women.
This date was established by the UN with resolution 54/134 of 17 December 1999.
Sadly, the matrix of violence against women can still be traced today in the inequality of relations between men and women. And the same Declaration adopted by the UN General Assembly speaks of violence against women as “one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position to men“.
“Sexual violence against women and girls is rooted in centuries of male domination. Let us not forget that the gender inequalities that fuel rape culture are essentially a question of power imbalances.” – UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
This is what is reported on the UN web site:
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world, that still today remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding it.
In general terms, it manifests itself in physical, sexual and psychological forms, encompassing:
- intimate partner violence (battering, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide);
- sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking, cyber- harassment);
- human trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation);
- female genital mutilation; and
- child marriage.
If you want further information on the declaration click Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993 which defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”