Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
The existential and family story of Marcello Fois wins The immense distraction (Einaudi), with 83 votes, the 64th edition of the Campiello Prize, awarded for the first time in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido of Venice.
«Writing is a very difficult profession. There’s a lot of difference between writers and people who publish. So much gratitude for this world. Meanwhile, I want to thank a person who is no longer with us, but who is there for me, who was a beautiful woman, anything but livid, very resilient, her name was Michela Murgia” said Fois, 66, immediately after the announcement, remembering the writer and her friend Michela Murgia, who died in 2023, mentioned in the dedication to the book.
The novel and the memory of Grazia Deledda
Ettore Manfredini, the ninety-year-old protagonist of the story, in which Fois leaves Sardinia for Emilia, has just died, but he has the feeling of having woken up and sees again what he has built, what he has lost and left in a sort of balance sheet of his entire life, as if to say that we don’t have to wait until we die to stop and think about what we do. Fois, a Sardinian from Nuoro who lives with his family in Bologna, wanted to remember Grazia Deledda during the evening: «I was born 200 meters from her house. Deledda is still the only Italian woman who has received the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was also the first woman to agree to run for office in 1919, when it was impossible for women to do so and she, ‘scratching’ a law that did not prevent candidacy but voting, ran. A wonderful woman, who we will need today and who we should remember at school.”
The ranking: Pierantozzi second by three votes
Second in a head to head another Einaudi author Alcide Pierantozzi who with I twist it (Einaudi) won 80 preferences and where he spoke firsthand about mental illness, life with pharmacological therapies, hallucinations and alterations in the perception of reality. «I recount all the clinical episodes of dissociation in a chronological way and so they were exorcised but, in reality, other, different obsessions arrived. I dare say that writing is very dangerous. This book changed my life and everyday life, it did me some good to have managed to communicate something” explained Pierantozzi, also a finalist for the 2026 Strega Prize.
Third with 54 votes Elena Varvello with Life always (Guanda), a story of love and rebellion between war and fascism in the certainty «that everything holds together. May the past also be the present” said the author.
Joan of Arc by Valeria Parrella who speaks to today’s young people in the novel The little girl (Feltrinelli) had to settle for fourth place with 33 votes and Ermanno Cavazzoni, for one vote less, fifth place with Story of a friendship (Quodlibet), in which he talks about his long relationship with the writer Gianni Celati, 32 votes.
The guests and the evening on TV
Sitting in the front row in the Great Hall, among the over 900 guests present were the Minister of Tourism, Gianmarco Mazzi, the mayor of Venice Simone Venturini, the president of the Chamber’s Culture Commission, Federico Mollicone, the president of the Venice Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and the councilor for culture of the Veneto Region, Valeria Mantovan.
The evening hosted for the first time in one of the symbolic places of Venetian cinema and culture by Alessio Viola with Arianna Porcelli Safonov, author and satirical performer and musical guest Margherita Vicario and Matteo Caccia, author and radio presenter, as well as member of the Jury of Letterati, will be broadcast on 10 October on Sky Arte at 11pm, on Sky Documentaries at 7.45pm, streaming on Now and free-to-air on Cielo in the late evening.
The other awards: career in Starnone
During the evening there will also be space for the other awards promoted by the Il Campiello Foundation – Confindustria Veneto starting from the Lifetime Achievement Award assigned in this edition to Domenico Starnone who, moved, told a fairy tale found in My Africa by Karen Blixen and shortly before she had underlined that: «Winning prizes when you are young is invigorating, when you are old it is comforting».
The Campiello Opera Prima was instead awarded to Nadeesha Uyangoda for Dirty water (Einaudi). The Campiello Junior went to Rosella Postorino and Daniele Mencarelli and the Campiello Giovani to Matteo Ghisleri with the story Route recalculation.
282 out of 300 of the Readers Anonymous jury voted.