There is a writing that does not just narrate the world: it affects it, like a diamond on the glass. It is that of Nicoletta Verna, author capable of transforming history into pulsating material, silences into characters, scars in sentences that tell the soul. In Cosenza Verna – former author of the award -winning “The emotional value” (Einaudi, 2021) – presented his latest novel, “Glass days”in an event that celebrated its presence in the dozen 2025 of the Sila Prize, one of the most prestigious awards of the Italian literary panorama. “The days of glass” is a work that breathes with the lungs of pure literature: on the one hand, the epic power of a family saga set between the Matteotti crime and the resistance, on the other, the smooth and sharp prose that has become its brand. Verna sculpts the words with the patience of an goldsmith – attentive to the musicality of the dialect, the sound of the pauses, to the gestures that tell more than the dialogues – but it drives them against the reader as stones. Because redeeming, the protagonist born under the “unbalanced” of the day on which Mussolini consolidated power, is not a heroine: she is a woman with a legs crippled by polio and a heart that refuses to harden, not even when the violence of the hierarch glass, her husband, transforms the domestic hearth into the battlefield.
The Verna does not tell the twenty years: it brings it to the repressed desires, on the waiting nights of Iris, the partisan who hides a secret capable of changing everything. His writing is a suspended bridge between documentary and lyricism: he returns the scratch of injustices but also the obstinate tenderness of the losers, those who “believe in tomorrow not for optimism, but out of despair”. It is not surprising, then, that his exclusion from the twelfth of the Strega 2025 award has generated reactions on both readers and literary critics and professionals.
“Glass days” is an intense and courageous story set in a complex historical period …
«I wanted to tell a story that was also an allegory of violence in all its forms. So I chose a historical period that, even from a metaphorical point of view, helped to understand what violence was, what the consequences are, and also the ways with which the human soul and mankind oppose. Humile and mild woman, Redenta is also equipped with great tenacity and in the end it will be able to make the mildness prevail over blind violence ».
RedENTA embodies hope in a context of violence and oppression …
«Redenta was born on a particular day, to mention Ettore Scola’s film. He was born on June 10, 1924, the day of the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, therefore already at the time of his birth embodies a fate of victim of violence. Matteotti was a victim’s victim of fascist violence, Redenta is a civil victim. But from a symbolic point of view, the concept is similar. So I built it keeping in mind the balance between fragility, oppression, difficulty in opposing but also enormous strength of mind and a Christian pietas as the only way to contrast with violence and try to understand what justice is “.
How did you work to maintain a balance between historical reality and literary narrative?
«At the end of the novel I wrote a note to say that there is nothing true and there is nothing false, that the story is invented. And each line is inspired, treats, based on historical facts that really happened. Obviously there is a job on a double track on the one hand, the great story – the easiest part, because it is enough to consult the sources – the complex, but also more compelling part, is to document itself on the small reality of a village of 2 thousand souls on the Romagna Apennines of the 30s. There there was also a job on folklore and moods of those years based on oral testimonies and on diaries and small local publications that have been of great help to me. “
In his book a language hybridized by the Romagna dialect emerges which recalls the tradition of Elsa Morante and Tonino Guerra. How important was this stylistic choice?
«It has been very important for several reasons. For a question of mimesis, I had to make as much as possible as a woman really spoke in those years who could not be a clean, cultured but hybridized Italian with dialect and simple. For a matter of music, the dialect is musical. I liked the harmony that came out of the pastiche between Italian and Romagna. Because so Romagnoli do. And then to create an atmosphere as close as possible to that piece of the world ».
His book was proposed to the Strega Prize by Elena Stancanelli and received great appreciation from critics and readers, also winning the Manzoni 2024 prize. How did he experience the news of the exclusion from the twelfth?
«Well, when you participate in a competition, of course you accept its rules in all respects. So, I thank the jury for the time he dedicated to the evaluation and reading of my novel and does not enter into the merits of their decisions, which are certainly very well motivated and shared. Many colleagues and personalities from the literary world have expressed support and surprise for its exclusion ».
What is the message he would like to give them?
«Of enormous gratitude. It is written for the public even before the prizes. I did not expect this actual avalanche of affection, and I am happy that this story has come to so many people. I think the collective memory remains a very important value and the affection of people towards the book demonstrates this ».
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