Italy
Nadia Terranova
Nadia Terranova (1978) is an Italian writer and translator born in Messina. She graduated philosophy at the University of Messina, and received her PhD in modern history from the University of Catania. In 2003, he moved to Rome, where he began publishing children's books. He debuted in 2012 with a children's novel inspired by the life of Bruno Schulz. She collaborates with a number of newspapers and magazines, and also writes for radio. From 2021, he has his own column in the magazine "Vanity Fair". In the same year, she published a graphic novel, illustrated by Lelio Bonaccorso. She was a member of the "Horizons" program at the 78th Venice Film Festival. “Farewell, ghosts” was: Finalist, Premio Strega, 2019 / Winner, Premio Alassio Centolibri / Selected among the 10 Best Italian Books of 2018 by Corriere della Sera.
ADDIO FANTASMI (FAREWELL, GHOSTS)
Translation: Kalina Janeva
Ida is a married woman in her late thirties, who lives in Rome and works at a radio station. Her mother wants to renovate the family apartment in Messina, to put it up for sale and asks her daughter to sort through her things--to decide what to keep and what to throw away.
Surrounded by the objects of her past, Ida is forced to deal with the trauma she experienced as a girl, twenty-three years earlier, when her father left one morning, never to return. The fierce silences between mother and daughter, the unbalanced friendships that leave her emotionally drained, the sense of an identity based on anomaly, even the relationship with her husband, everything revolves around the figure of her absent father. Mirroring herself in that absence, Ida has grown up into a woman dominated by fear, suspicious of any form of desire. However, as her childhood home besieges her with its ghosts, Ida will have to find a way to break the spiral and let go of her father finally.
“Farewell, Ghosts” is a poetic and intimate novel about what it means to build one's own identity.