The semifinalists of the thirty-fifth edition of the Giorgio Scerbanenco Prize are in the starting blocks. The final five will be drawn from a wide selection: thirty novels selected by the festival committee—chaired by Cecilia Scerbanenco, Valerio Calzolaio, Luca Crovi, Sergio Pent, and John Vignola—from over one hundred competing works. From October 27th to November 4th, readers will be able to vote for their five favorite titles ; the weighted sum of the votes from the public and the literary committee will determine the final five, which will be revealed on December 3rd in Milan.

Among the thirty, which feature titles and authors already known to the public and others offering new voices, we highlight the presence of Francesco Musolino with his "Giallo Lipari", published by Edizioni E/O, and Lorenzo Scano, the writer from Capoterra who now lives in Milan, in the competition with his "fuori orario" (SEM).

The wide variety of titles in competition reveals a vibrant Italian landscape, and the long list of nominees represents the great ferment in Italian crime fiction : from urban investigations to Mediterranean atmospheres, from psychological nightmares to the more tangential branches of the thriller, these works testify that the "noir" and "crime" genres continue to be not only narrative hues, but also open fields of experimentation.

The moment of voting thus opens up another dimension: that of the reader who does not wait passively but becomes a judge, participating in the expansion and definition of the canon.

Now all that remains is the wait for the final five and for the evening of December 3rd, during the Noir in Festival at Casa Manzoni in Milan, where the winning work—chosen by the jury and five jurors from the Circolo dei Lettori—will be announced.

Last year, Elias Mandreu won the readers' prize with “Mantene s'odiu” (PIEMME), while the Giorgio Scerbanenco prize was awarded to “L'ultimo pinguino delle langhe” (Rizzoli) by the Ligurian writer Orso Tosco.

© Riproduzione riservata