«Telling about my city, telling about Messina, also means talking about the many fellow citizens who have left the island. I am part of the lost generation.” Angelo Scuderi, 29 years old, signs his debut novel, «Prima dirsi addio» (Castelvecchi), set between Messina, Taormina, Tindari and Milan, poised between education and disenchantment, with a prose that is now angry, now disenchanted, with a genuine naivety.
The protagonists are Leo, “a restless young man from Messina”, and Beatrice, a girl from Milan affected by a constant sense of inadequacy. They meet by pure chance, they recognize each other without really understanding each other and on their journey Scuderi (who will present the novel on Tuesday 18th, at 6pm, in the Mondadori bookshop in Messina) interweaves clandestine horse races, religious rites and interrupted confessions, with the Black Madonna of Tindari as a symbolic point of meeting and confusion. The result, states the author, “is a melancholic South, a land of conquest and emotional squandering”.
Angelo, how did your debut come about?
«For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a writer, it’s my big dream. I wanted to imitate what I read, with the ambition of being able to give back to others what the great writers had given me.”
Every debut is a sign of encouragement for those who share his passion. In your case, how did it go?
«A story to be told. I handed the manuscript to a friend, the journalist Mauro Garofalo, who didn’t give me any response for a few months. Then, on my birthday he told me: they took your novel. I immediately thought of… a theft. But no. It was a real contract.”
The incipit is surprising. What role does sexuality play in your novel?
«My intention was to explore the most traumatic side of memories, the dichotomy between the one who remembers and the one who, instead, has the gift of oblivion and this tension is captured in the choice of the continuous use of the imperfect. The incipit is surprising because sex is still considered taboo, but I always look for highly realistic writing.”
She’s from ’96. Where have his friends, his schoolmates gone?
«Almost everyone has left. Here is the theme of depopulation, Messina enters the book as a land of conquest, squandering and subtraction, an Italian phenomenon which in the province of Messina takes on terrifying dimensions. The city is emptied of young people and everyone remains to watch, inert.”
What is autobiographical in “his” Leo?
«Certainly the importance given to friendships. And even the triggering episode, the first meeting with Bea, really happened. She was traveling and, at least from my point of view, it was love at first sight. She asked me to join her a few days later in Tindari to see each other again and only at that point did I realize that I knew nothing about her. Without revealing too much, we can say that the novel is a What If, a “what would have happened if…””.
It is a strongly religious book, poised between the sacred and the profane. How come?
«Because Sicily is the land of this blend. You can understand this by going to see the Vara, while those who pull it mix acts of faith and shout blasphemies at the same time. Only in Sicily could this happen. I admit it, I have an obsession with religion, I think the novel is a long scream of pain and a gesture of hope. Just like Bea’s prayer at the Tindari sanctuary, capturing religion in its popular essence, faith not the clergy, a reason for elevation of the spirit.”
Angelo, will this lost generation be saved?
«In the face of prevailing nihilism, the only thing we can do is hope that a new God will come to save us. And I think that this God can be the word, the word of poetry and writing. At least, I hope so.”