Caro Pier Paolo

A new, important collaboration for our Circle. From March 4th to 6th, Milan will host Book Pride, a national fair for independent publishing. We, at Casa Manzoni, will be previewing it. Together with two magnificent ladies, intellectuals and writers, we will commemorate the centenary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's birth: Eva Cantarella and Dacia Maraini, the latter author of Dear Pier Paolo, recently published by Neri Pozza. The book, a collection of letters addressed to his beloved friend, is a kind of timeless dialogue, in memory of a "boy" always on the run, of the director seduced by the most archaic Africa, of the poet capable of reaching merciless truths, of the polemicist who enthralled and divided the Italian bourgeoisie of the 1970s, guilty, now worn down by consumerism, of having caused, along with the fireflies, all authenticity to disappear. As if he still inhabited her days and nights, Dacia Maraini continues to question him about certain positions he has taken: on feminism, abortion, modernity. In the background, but not too much, is Alberto Moravia and his enlightened clarity. Page after page, not only nostalgia for her friend emerges, but also, as a calm warning about today, disappointment with a literary society that now only engages with book print runs or is only encountered in the frenzy of festivals. Dacia, however, does not give up: with the grace that also distinguishes her writing, she continues to reflect on those important issues. And, stubbornly, she demands that the investigation into a still unsolved death be reopened. With her, Eva Cantarella, a scholar of ancient civilizations and a writer no less attentive to the past and present.