«I don’t like the “generational” label. My intention was to capture a historical moment in which we were all left without certainties. We live a present contract.” With «Festa con cassowary» (Sellerio), the 28-year-old from Turin Leonardo San Pietro signs one of the most surprising debuts of the year, entering the trio of winners of the 2025 Mondello Prize, alongside Anna Mallamo and Teresa Ciabatti.
The novel – set in a villa on the hills of Turin during a party that turns into a collective ritual – is the x-ray of a generation that lives “in the balance at every age, suspended between lightness and vertigo, between the fear of not being seen and the urgency of leaving a mark”. Saint Peter speaks of a discomfort that is not just youthful: “True solitude is ten times more excruciating among others” he states during the interview and his characters seek authentic contact in a hyper-connected but unlistened world. Saint Peter evokes the arrival on the scene of the cassowary – considered the most dangerous bird in the world, native to the rainforests – and symbolically this signifies the passage into adulthood, the uncertain future, the global conflicts we have to deal with.
His novel was born from a party, from a moment of joy. However, that lightness inevitably slips into anxiety. Does it happen when we realize we are not invincible?
«This epiphany is a very personal moment for each of us, but I believe that it becomes apparent between the end of high school and the moment of graduation, that is, when we leave the socially accepted and shared tracks and, suddenly, we are no longer students, we are no longer protected in the eyes of others. And so social anxiety grows. It coincides with the moment in which you are faced with the obligatory construction of an identity linked to your future. Every choice made excludes many others and we realize that we are no longer infallible.”
Between masks and fake smiles, she talks about a kids’ party, making it a social laboratory, a stage to talk about. Why this set?
«The party was the spark. The novel was born with the idea of telling the chaotic moment we are experiencing, the pain I felt, this great anguish when thinking about the future. The party, par excellence, is a moment of lightness and fun that I claim; but there is also a double movement, because on these occasions a social anxiety forcefully emerges, a need to hide under the smiling masks that represent the contradictions to which we are subjected.”
The cassowary takes center stage, evoking a mixture of fear and attraction. From a symbolic point of view, what could “touching the cassowary” mean today?
«I think like Umberto Eco, according to which after having written a novel the writer should die. It was a bit extreme, sure, but I believe that the writer should never give a clear interpretation of what he writes about, especially the symbols he uses. The cassowary opens a crisis for my characters, it could be the future or the protests in Gaza. My cassowary is something that happens around us and on which we need to take a position.”
By the way, is writing a hobby or a civil commitment for you?
«I claim the fact that writing can also be lightness, but not only this. I started writing this novel at the age of twenty-one with lightheartedness and a bit of recklessness but even though I don’t even have a thousand followers, I believe it is necessary to take sides in the world out there, using my words, my ideas.”
The outbreak of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East seems to have erased the climate emergency and the youth protests chanting “Fridays for future” are a thing of the past. Does it worry you?
“Yes. I am concerned about this blanket of benevolentism with which the problem of climate change is addressed as if it were something negligible. Instead, it’s like an asteroid ready to hit us full on. It is coming and it will change our lives. It concerns our present, the future of the next generations and above all the invisible, such as the poorest classes or climate migrants.”
You are among the three winners of the Mondello Prize, the ceremony of which will be held in December in Palermo. Is he happy?
«I would say rather incredulous. I can’t wait to be in Palermo to collect this prestigious award!
He trained at the Holden School and there it is reiterated that writing is not comparable to saving lives. We agree, but how important is writing to you?
«Very much. It was important to be able to give voice to urgencies, emergencies that I perceived around me, far from being resolved…”.
Did the symbolic use of the cassowary, its irruption on the narrative scene, allow you to clarify?
«He put my priorities in order. Unfortunately, there are many cassowaries, many emergencies that require our attention. You don’t write to give answers, but rather to push readers to open their eyes, to tear back the curtain on reality.”
We live in a social era, we are all connected and on display but, inevitably, are we all more alone?
“Yes. This is precisely the heart of my book which emerges with the use of the third person and with these characters locked in their thoughts, in interior monologues. I used this trick to capture the digital bubble in which we find ourselves, connected to each other but increasingly alone with ourselves, prey to our anxieties.”