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It happens that you are at the Turin International Book Fair. You are there because you were called to participate in a meeting on literature and cinema, together with seven other Calabrian writers, at the table of the Calabria Film Commission Foundation. And you’re there, of course, also because your debut novel – «With the dark I see it», published by Einaudi in 2025 – continues to attract compliments. And nominations. And prizes. And it happens that, a few minutes before entering the room, the phone rings. Or maybe a message arrives. Or maybe it’s your agent reaching out to you with a smile. And with the news. You won the Caccuri Prize for Fiction. Yet another. This is what happened to Anna Mallamo yesterday, at the Oval pavilion of the Lingotto Fiere, inside the Calabria exhibition space. For her, a writer, journalist and colleague who directs the Culture and entertainment pages of our newspaper, it is the recognition that closes a year of important steps: the SuperMondello already won, the presentation at the 2026 Strega Prize, the presence in the 2026 Decina of the Sila Prize. An editorial trajectory that imposed its debut as one of the most relevant narrative cases of the latest national literary season.
The novel is set in Reggio Calabria in the early 1980s, a city wounded at the end of the first ‘Ndrangheta war. The protagonist is Lucia Carbone, a sixteen-year-old high school student, who kidnaps a schoolmate and imprisons him in the basement of her grandmother’s house. A story of adolescence and transformation, written in a mixed language of Italian and Calabrian dialect that the novel builds with extraordinary coherence from the first to the last page.
«I am very happy because it is an important Calabrian award. Because it talks about that Calabria that you have to go and discover, get to know and that holds the sense of belonging to the places very high – declared the writer –. A belonging that does not mean closure, it means openness, encounter and dialogue with other worlds. This is the Calabria that we are interested in telling: a Calabria that opens up to the world, that welcomes, that imagines a richer, more beautiful and plural world. We writers experience a privilege that brings with it a great responsibility: that of trying to change the gaze of others, of giving shape to new perspectives and finding a voice for those who, often, don’t have one.”
The recognition comes as part of the 15th edition of the Caccuri Prize, (which will take place in the center of the province of Crotone from 27 July to 10 August), one of the most significant literary events on the Italian scene in the field of non-fiction, presented at the Turin Salon with four finalists: Tommaso Cerno with «Le reasoning di Giuda» (Rizzoli), Pietro Grasso with «’U Maxi» (Feltrinelli), Cecilia Sala with «I sons of hatred» (Mondadori) and Luca Sommi with «Solo amore» (PaperFist).
Born in 2012 thanks to the Accademia dei Caccuriani, chaired by Adolfo Barone together with Olimpio Talarico and Cataldo Calabretta, the Prize has established itself as one of the most solid cultural realities in the South, a national point of reference for non-fiction and public debate. With Anna Mallamo, from this year, also for the narrative that tells Calabria to the world.