La memoria della cenere

La memoria della cenere
(NN Editore, 2019)

by Chiara Marchelli

The author in conversation with journalist Maria Teresa Cometto and Monica Rossi (CUNY)

Elena is a writer who knows how to read stories on peoples faces. One night, she suffers an aneurysm in her New York home. She survives and, together with Patrick, decides to move to a small French village in Auvergne under the Puy de Lúg volcano. While recovering, Elena’s mind burns with many thoughts, interrupted memories, newly discovered feelings, expectations and uncertainties, just like the boiling magma a few miles away. And while a column of smoke, ash and lava begins to pour from the mountain’s mouth, the protagonists find themselves stuck within the house’s walls, in a suspended time that subverts roles, certainties, fears and desires.
Written in a clear and marked language, capable of conveing emotions, La memoria della cenere is about a rebirth, a regenerating soul searching for a fragile, delicate balance with the unperturbed truths that govern life.

Chiara Marchelli lives in New York and has taught Italian at New York University since 2004. In 2003, she published her first novel, Angeli e cani (Marsilio), that was awarded the Rapallo Carige Debut Novel Prize, followed by L’amore involontario and Le mie parole per te (Piemme Open). Her novel Le notti blu (Giulio Perrone Editore) was longlisted for the Premio Strega in 2017 and is to be translated and published in Germany. After her narrative non-fiction book, New York, una città di corsa (Giulio Perrone Editore), Chiara Marchelli has published La memoria della cenere (NNE, January 2019).

In ITALIAN.