Il sogno di un giorno qualsiasi. La Praga di Kafka
The latest novel by Giuseppe Aloe, the writer born in Cosenza in 1962, and finalist of the Premio Strega in 2012, with: “The logic of desire”. The basis of the story is a sense of the dark. The City of Kafka as pervaded by an intermittent darkness. Its streets, avenues and narrow alleys that intersect with sudden widening and continue into backstreets with a dead-end, are reminiscent of something seen in the stories and in the style of Kafka. Does the mind of the writer coincide, at least in part, with the city? Maybe, especially in the labyrinthine forms of Prague’s old town, but it is through the stories, letters, diaries, notes that you can attempt to form a topographic map on which the desires, dreams and disasters coincide with open spaces, with a fixed bridge on the Vltava, with the jumble shops. La Praga di Kafka is a book that explores the imagination and seeks to bring the city and writer together. It serves to find out how much of Prague there is in Kafka and how much of Kafka in the city.
Giuseppe Aloe,
Il sogno di un giorno qualsiasi. La Praga di Kafka,
Giulio Perrone Editore: Rome 2013,
160 pages
Il ricatto del tempo
“I love reading, I love being elsewhere, especially Prague”. This is the business card of Filadelfo Giuliano: a poet, translator and writer, passionate about Czech literature. In his latest novel “Il ricatto del tempo” Jan, a former intelligence agent of communist Czechoslovakia, tries to distance himself, not without great difficulty, from his uncomfortable past. Beside him is Hanka, a Czech Airlines hostess with whom the protagonist is in love. Hanka perhaps also loves Jan, but the two fail to get their relationship to take off… The novel covers a time span ranging from 1989 to 2004, the years, which saw the end of communism and the beginning of a new era full of hope, which often remained only that. The story of Jan and Hanka is intertwined with the political events that changed the country and was affected by them. In the background is Prague, protagonist of the works of thousands of writers of all eras and parts of the world. The city described by Giuliano however, is not seen as a magical place, but as a living organism in which the two protagonists live and love.
Filadelfo Giuliano,
Il ricatto del tempo
La riflessione: Cagliari 2013,
148 pages
Incontri con Praga
“Incontri con Praga” is the catalogue of the exhibition of the painter Germano Paolini, born in Brescia in 1950, but Tuscan by adoption, who has exhibited his work at the Baroque chapel of the Italian Institute of Culture in Prague from October the 14th to the 29th, 2013. The catalogue displays the artist’s works made according to different techniques, inspired by different glimpses of the Bohemian capital, that has always fascinated writers and artists everywhere. Oils on canvas, the use of LEDs, wood and metal, watercolors, ink and block prints show the soul of Prague as it is perceived by Paolini, who with the attentive and expert eye of a painter captures and transmits through the images imprinted on his canvases, details and overviews through the filter of his own sensibility. In the book, as well as an introduction by the Director of the IIC Prague, Giovanni Sciola, there is also an introduction by art critic and curator Davide Sarchioni.
Germano Paolini,
Incontri con Praga,
Edizioni Effigi: Grosseto 2013,
77 pages
Krátká sentimentální cesta a jiné povídky
Coming out in Czech, edited and translated by the Italianist Alice Flemrová is: “Krátká sentimentální cesta a jiné povídky” (The Short sentimental journey and other stories) by Aron Hector Schmitz, alias of Italo Svevo. The writings presented here in Czech by the Italian playwright and writer were partly published in periodicals, while others were found after the author’s death, many of which remain unfinished. The main story, which gives the title to the collection, was written by Svevo in 1928 but remained unfinished due to the death of the author on the 13th of September of the same year. It was to be published for the first time only in 1949. The protagonist of the story is Mr. Aghios who goes on a business trip by train from Milan to Trieste, during which he meets several characters with whom he is engaged in conversations with subtle psychological nuances, in the typical style of the great Svevo. Among the stories, besides “Short sentimental journey”, there is: “Argo and his master”, “A fight”, 2The peculiarity of Dr. Menghi”, “The Evil Eye”, “Generous wine”, “A contract” and others.
Italo Svevo (by Alice Flemrová),
Krátká sentimentální cesta a jiné povídky,
Paseka: Prague 2012,
349 pages