Donatella Di Pietrantonio beats everyone at the 2024 Strega Prize with “The fragile age”
“I will use my voice in defense of rights,” the writer said during the ceremonyDonatella Di Pietrantonio is the winner of the 2024 Strega Prize. With “L'età fragili”, Einaudi editions, she surpassed everyone with 189 votes. The book is dedicated to survivors, through the relationship between a mother, Lucia, and her twenty-two-year-old daughter Amanda, stereotypes about the years and the safety of small provincial places are undermined, with the pandemic in the background.
For the first time the writer, who has never left her profession as a children's dentist, also addressed gender violence by recalling a crime event that occurred in 1997 in her homeland, Abruzzo.
«I promise that I will use my written and oral voice in defense of rights for which my generation of women fought hard and which today are no longer taken for granted», she said excitedly on the occasion of her fourth time at the Strega, (in 2021 in five with Borgo sud) and already winner of the Campiello Prize in 2017 with “L'Arminuta”.
Dario Voltolini maintained second place, in which he had placed surprisingly in the first vote in Benevento, with 143 votes for "Winter" (The Ship of Theseus), a powerful tale of the last years of his father's life.
And Chiara Valerio remained in third place with a gap of 5 votes, 138 preferences, for “Who says and who is silent” (Sellerio), which takes us to Scauri, her town of origin, and lets us delve into the feelings and prejudices and in the axiom of the unknowability of the other through Lea's story.
Fourth Raffaella Romagnolo with “Aggiustare l'Universo” (Mondadori), 83 votes, fifth Paolo Di Paolo with “Novel without humans” (Feltrinelli), 66 votes, his second time at the Strega Prize, and sixth Giartosio with “Autobiogrammatica” ( minimum fax), 25 votes.
During the evening Chiara Valerio remembered Michela Murgia.
(Unioneonline)