Strega Prize 2023, Ada d’Adamo wins with “Come d’aria”

The nymphaeum babbles. He was waiting for the announcement of the winning novel of the seventy-seventh edition of the Premio Strega. Come d’aria by Ada d’Adamo, with serene concern. There are few octogenarians, many splendid 50-year-olds, not a few 30-year-olds. No buffet (it was the one that attracted octogenarians, especially from the center, the Princesses of the Great Beauty). He’s served drinks and horribly sticky sundaes. For a select few there was a gala dinner, the first in the history of the prize, at the Caffè delle Arti, just a few steps from the Nymphaeum, followed by a “transfer” to the prize-giving ceremony.

Vittorio Sgarbi comes from the main entrance. Just with some friends. It used to come to an end. He approaches Minister Sangiuliano. They’re not sitting around.

A minute later, Francesco Piccolo arrives with a flower on his heart. He says: “It’s for Ada”. Ada D’Adamo, the winner. Mario Martone, also for Ada, “a lifelong friend,” he says. At the first count, only applause begins when Geppi Cucciari calls his name.

The speeches were overheard between the tables: First, the strike of the vehicles. Second, holidays yes, no, if so, where and with whom. Third, the séance. Over a few aperitifs and some conversations, much was said about it: at the end of June, the powers that be were questioned by one of the two competing factions (last year it was the witch of bipolarity) about the end result It was an extra-parliamentary approach, which with The novel “Spatriati” by Mario Desiati or “The Irregular, the Unclassifiable” won almost unanimous applause. Last year Desiati dedicated his Strega to Mariateresa Dilascia, who won the 1995 Strega and died before he could withdraw it. An impressive circularity.

Victory had certainly been won months ago by Rosella Postorino with Mi Limitavo ad amare te (Feltrinelli), the only novel – it has been stressed several times – that invents a story (and embeds it in the story precisely during the war). in Bosnia, also in the top five last year with And then we’ll besafe by Alessandra Carati, Mondadori). His book is about the human impossibility of breaking free from the fact that what protects us kills us to a certain extent, and if it doesn’t kill us, it changes us, it rapes us. Postorino says: “It is the contradiction of existence: sooner or later the life that was given to us will kill us.”

The death of Ada D’Adamo, who won with Come d’aria (Elliott), changed everything. D’Adamo, a ballet student and dancer, died April 1 of the illness she wrote about in her book after a lifetime caring for her daughter, who was also critically ill and now motherless. His death turned the tables, reignited competition, sparked a war between good and evil, and good was Adam’s voice.

Previously, Romana Petri was another possible candidate with “Stealing the Night” (Mondadori), a heavily fictionalized biography by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. But the witch has seemed happy for years, edging Mondadori into the last places (the last sensational relegation was that of Teresa Ciabatti in 2021, with It seemed Beauty first crowned the winner and then even finished in the top five). The other two finalists, Andrea Canobbio (The Night Crossing, The Ship of Theseus) and Maria Grazia Calandrone (Where Thou Didn’t Take Me, Einaudi), competed for entry. It hadn’t been this clear in a while.

Stefano Petrocchi’s direction has been causing many surprises for years. Petrocchi did to Strega what Amadeus did to Sanremo: he pushed the boundaries, sometimes through quota mechanisms, which had a positive effect on the mystery and negative on the pressure of the big publishers, which is now less and less effective. It’s been quite emotional for a while. In the essay witch hunt. Anatomy of a Literary Prize (Nottetempo), the critic Gianluigi Simonetti writes that the enchanted selection represents perfectly the mutation of literary criticism: he is entrusted more and more to “traditional journalists, spindoctors and other writers”, preferring books with a strong emotional impact and for ” universal entertainment”, neglecting the aspects of style, language and inventiveness. Are Strega’s novels the definitive standard of Italian literature or Italian literary criticism? Should literary criticism influence writing? If that were the case, it would be terrible: literary criticism simply has to see and explain what is happening. And there are times when only out-of-genre books, but fiction books that get ranked without the help of TikTok, TV, and influencers, need to tell the story of something we can all relate to, and need to to do with life, which is literature for the writer.

Whether D’Adamo’s win was due to his story or his writing, that’s the crux of the matter. Perhaps there is no longer any mediation between life and writing. There are shoelaces. And it is the new horizon that we must watch.