The Bridge Digital newspapers Croatian edition 1990s | Page 22

LITERATURE
December 1999
NOVELS IN ITALY IN THE 90s
This decade has seen considerable
development in literature in our
country.
Among the many exponents of the
time, we want to highlight the
work of Alessandro Baricco,
Niccolò Ammaniti and Dacia
Maraini.
Alessandro Baricco has become
famous for his novel “Ocean Sea”
which revolves around the lives of
a group of people gathered at a
remote seaside hotel, after the
shipwreck of a frigate of the
French navy in the ocean.
Mr. Baricco is a literary cubist, a
stylist who looks simultaneously at
the several sides of things. He
switches from one rhetorical mode
to another, from a kind of
symbolist
poetry
to
grand
adventure narrative to picaresque
comedy.
According to critics, it is a “book
about being, metaphysics juggled
like the best trick of a wise old
clown, this is a novel that at least
suggests there's more to life than
what any rationalist would tell
you”
Niccolò Ammaniti is a young
writer and actor, who is
considered a real promise in the
landscape of Italian literature. In
1994 he published his first novel,
“Branchie”, which immediately
made him famous among literary
critics. The novel tells the story of
a boy who has cancer and has to
move to India where he will
experience a lot of unpleasant and
strange adventures. We are sure he
will give us othe r important works
and will be among the best
novelists of the end of the
twentieth century.
Dacia Maraini is an Italian writer,
already famous outside Italy, who
has just received the “Premio
Strega” for her novel “Darkness”.
In 1990 she had received another
important prize, the “Book of the
Year Award” for her novel “La
lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa”.
Maraini’s work focuses on
women’s issues, and she has
written numerous plays and
novels.
Many reoccurring themes evident
in Maraini's work are: personal