Melania G. Mazzucco was born in Rome in 1966. She made her debut in fiction with Il bacio della Medusa (Medusa’s Kiss, 1996). Her novel Vita (2003) obtained the Premio Strega, Italy’s most important literary award. In Spain, it won the International Prize Arcebispo Juan de San Clemente for best foreign novel of the year 2004-2005. In 2005, it also became the Globe & Mail Book of the Year, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and one of the Publishers Weekly Top Ten Books of the Year, the only foreign work in the list.
Her novel Un giorno perfetto (A Perfect Day, 2005, Premio Roma) has been turned into the omonimous film by Ferzan Ozpetek.
Mazzucco won the Viareggio Tobino Literary Award 2011 as writer of the year, the 2011 Premio Vittorio De Sica for literature, and was awarded the Premio Ignazio Silone 2013 and the Dante d’oro by Bocconi University.
Her books have been translated in 27 countries and she has written award-winning works for cinema, theater, and radio. She has contributed with articles, reportages, and short stories to many major newspapers and magazines such as la Repubblica, Il Sole 24 Ore, Corriere della Sera, il manifesto, Il Messaggero, Nuovi Argomenti, and is regularly invited to hold conferences and lectures in major universities in Italy and abroad.
VITA
(excerpt)
Everyone is searching for someone, calling out in dozens of unknown languages, harsh and guttural. Everyone has someone who has come to get them, or they are waiting for someone on the dock, a name and address scrawled on a scrap of paper-a relative, a fellow countryman, a boss. And most people also have work con- tracts, even though they all deny it. You had to. In truth the second thing Diamante did in America was make up a story, something else he had never done before. In a certain sense you could say he lied. It works this way: At Ellis Island the Americans throw a bunch of questions at you-an interrogation of sorts. The interpreter, a really evil bastard who clearly has made a career out of exercising his zeal against his countrymen, explains that you must tell the truth and nothing but the truth because in America lying is greatest of sins, worse than stealing. Except that the truth doesn’t help them and it certainly doesn’t help you. So you ignore the interpreter and tell them the story you’ve prepared. If you believe it, so will they. Look them in the eye and swear my uncle will provide for me for the entire time I will stay in Nevorco (that’s a good one, because Agnello is tighter than a sheep’s ass). But the commission didn’t waste time in verifying. They in a hurry, for on the same day that he suddenly turned up, the commission had to examine another forty-five hundred of them, descended on America like the locusts in the Bible. The officials were exhausted and had been given orders to loosen the nets. They weren’t paying much attention to his answers. So Diamante pulled up his pants-and screwed them over.
Translated from Italian by Virginia Jewiss