Books always know when to arrive in the life of the reader or writer. And they call, they question, they know when in the life of someone who is about to give birth to their paper creature something needs to change or has already changed. «Exordiri» is the Latin verb to indicate the beginning of a weaving, of a warp on which to arrange a weft: ideas that become stories, stories that grow and become plots and novel projects, and once reread, revised, rewritten , are born and thus begin, delivering themselves to those who will read them. AND of literary debuts, this 2025 (a year, according to numerology, full of goals to achieve), is truly rich, around 70an important number that confirms the interest and attention of publishing houses, bookshops, literary prizes, social networks and critics towards new voices and imaginaries.
They are young and old newcomers, journalists, professionals, entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians; the largest presence is female and the most present regions are Campania and Sicily but it is all of Italy with its provinces that expresses, between historical novels, memoirs, intimate news and fantasy, the urgency of telling. The topics covered tell us about our time, family, sexuality, the search for one’s identity, female emancipation, the need to talk about the past, the couple model and, again, the relationship with others, knowledge of the body, constant objective correlative of stories, bringing to the surface traumas and ghosts, confusion and inadequacies, loneliness and private and collective unhappiness.
He has always loved traveling in the geographies of humanity with his work as a cultural journalist for the Gazzetta del Sud and as a blogger who, in his narrative notes, moves between reality and visions while observing the facts, Anna Mallamoa “Strattese” from Reggio who lives in Messina, who for his first novel, I can see it in the darkin the Einaudi Supercoralli (in bookstores in spring), set in the 80s in Reggio Calabria, chooses a fragile material between darkness and glimpses of light, «with a lot of Strait, a lot of family, a lot of emotions»: a seventeen-year-old kidnaps and keeps in the cellar of the grandmother, a schoolmate, son of a boss of the ‘Ndrangheta, an atypical story that forced itself to be born and that the author’s rich and sensitive writing, «that the darkness went precisely to look for it”, his word-tension transforms into a labyrinthine adventure. Three more debuts at Einaudi: narrative debut for Marina Pierifrom Salento, narratologist, former artistic director of FeST, the Milan TV Series Festival, with Gotico salentino, a story about self-search that passes through an unusual experience: that of Filomena, a “provincial medium” with the gift of evoking ghosts. And again Salento as the setting for Clementina di Giuliana Salviwith a beautiful female character inspired by the author’s great-grandmother, a courageous feminist in a Lecce remote from everything in the early twentieth century. The location and landscape change with the Aosta Valley Simone Turin: his Macaco (winner of the 37th edition of the Calvino Prize), set in Val d’Aosta, is the name of the character, an agricultural worker by choice, who in the daily life of a small town leads a simple and essential life.
There is a debut with the Calabrian publisher Rubbettino for Bianca Feniziatranslator from Campania who writes about cinema and literature (organises the Matera Film Festival), and chats in podcasts: it is a hymn to summer, between memory and childhood, between dream and nostalgia, Masters of the Sea, in which the adventure of summer in Calabria, in Jonia, with its sumptuous days, has the breath of infinite, grandiose things. Instead, La Grande Sete by Erica Cassano (Garzanti), born in Maratea, is set in post-war Naples, the first city to free itself from the Nazi-fascists: and there is the sound of Naples in this story in which the “great thirst” of the city poor in water, contrasted by a small “miracle”, the water that flows in Anna’s house, whose “thirst” for knowledge and freedom flows like water.
We return to Sicily with Sellerio for which Leonardo San Pietro makes his debut and uses writing to give voice to the anxieties and insecurities of a generation with Festa con Cassuario: the twenty-year-old Isa, in Turin, organizes a party in the garden of her villa, but in the general exaltation bursts in together with an anonymous gift a disturbing note: if by one in the morning no guest has the courage to touch the neighbours’ cassowary, Ezio, the boy Isa likes, and he hasn’t arrived yet, he will die. Antonella Giuffrè was born in La Spezia but lives in a town at the foot of Etna, where she works in the restaurant sector: her debut with La sower of courage for Tre60 editions takes us to Sicily in 1914 with a story of emancipation female and the character of Maria Roccaforte, a teacher from Ragusa who challenges common mistrust by deciding to open a school in a small town in the hinterland.
Set between the Sicily of large estates with its exuberant gardens and the outskirts of Mestre, You live by Giada Messina for Guanda it is a family story in which one must confront one’s own ghosts: Dalia lives with her father Felice and her new family (her mother died from heroin) but the father’s need to ensure the little girl has a peaceful life and the Franca’s desire to save her freedom puts her feelings and relationships to the test.
Two debuts by Sicilian female authors for Feltrinelli: Rosita Manuguerra signs Malanimaa coming-of-age story set on a small island where two girls live, through which the mothers’ struggle to emancipate themselves is told. And it’s a “mystery” The Nettle Rule, by Nunzia Scalzo, forensic graphologist and journalist. Set in Catania in the 70s, it begins the series “The Graphologist”. Sicily again for the setting in Palermo with the Palermo native Martino Giordano, who with Solferino publishes Variations on the theme: sexuality and the search for one’s identity, through the lives of Lidia, a cellist at the Palermo Conservatory, engaged to the pianist Dalila, and Leo, a problematic young gay man, whose meeting with a drag queen makes him realize that he wants to embark on a journey of transition.
And it is a noir that brings us to Trentino-Alto Adige the debut of Vittorio Colitta who signs Guilty Intentions for Newton Compton: investigating a ferocious murder in a sleepy mountain town is Inspector Alfredo Rinaldi who has arrived from Bari, his city, with the wound of a difficult past. Collaborating with him is the young profiler Elena De Benedetti Riari.
For Campania, again, there is Neapolitan Michela Panichi, who participated in the fifth edition of the Rai Fiction Serial Writing Master, and with Nottetempo publishes La Cecilia. Adolescence, the discovery of sexuality, the knowledge of others, betrayal, summer, are the themes of this story set in Ischia at the end of the 90s. Thirteen is the age of Cecilia who, while experiencing her parents’ relationship crisis, meets Alba and new friends on the beach with whom she pretends to be a boy.
