1. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
FEBRUARY 23, 2017 at 3 pm.
The Library of Congress European Division & Italian Language Table,
the Embassy of Italy & Italian Cultural Institute with the collaboration of New Academia Publishing and Italians in DC/ParoLab have the pleasure to invite you to:
for his latest novel La scuola cattolica (2016).
The novel is centered around a horrific murder that in 1975 shocked the whole country and was committed by a group of young Italian men
who frequented the same Catholic school that Albinati attended.
It will be in English with a few readings from Italian.
2. PAROLAB ITALIANS IN DC
Talk & Conversation with the Author Edoardo Albinati for the only member of Parolab IDC. With Dinner. In a private residence in DC.
Thursday February 23 , 2017 at 7 pm.
3. ITALIAN EMBASSY OF DC
FEBRUARY 24, 2017 at 7 pm.
THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL AND THE ROMAN BOURGEOISIE
with author Edoardo Albinati
The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington, in collaboration with New Academia Publishing, Italians in DC/ParoLab, and The Library of Congress, invite you to the presentation by Edoardo Albinati of his book, La scuola cattolica, in conversation with Anna Lawton, Lorenza Pieri and Lucia A. Wolf.
Last year, a jury of the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington participated in the selection of the finalists to the prestigious literary award Premio Strega. La scuola cattolica by Edoardo Albinati was subsequently selected as the winner at the conclusive ceremony which took place in Rome in July 2016.
This monumental work captures the spirit of an epoch in Italian history. “Rome in the 70s. A residential area, a private school. It seems that nothing of note would ever happen there. And yet, against all odds, suddenly that nest of respectable people is caught in a whirlwind of madness. Soon after graduation from high school, a few students become involved in the most clamorous crime of the time, the Circeo Murder. Edoardo Albinati was their schoolmate, and for forty years he kept the secrets of that ‘bad education.’ Now he tells them, as if he were looking at his own image, mysterious and deformed, at the bottom of a water well. This gives birth to a powerful novel, which overwhelms the reader with the scope of its themes and the variety of adventures, big and small: from student songs to the most daring thoughts, from a meticulous reconstruction of aspects of Italian history and society. Adolescence, sex, religion and violence; money, friendship, revenge; legendary professors, priests, thugs, little geniuses, psychopaths, enigmatic girls, and terrorists. Mixing up real people with fictitious characters, Albinati builds a powerful, flowing narrative, which courageously faces the great existential questions and the problems of the time, and shows the other side of things. La scuola cattolica is probably the book that was lacking in our culture.”
LA SCUOLA CATTOLICA, Edoardo Albinati (Rizzoli 2016), Premio Strega 2016
Rome in the 70s. A residential area, a private school. It seems that nothing of note would ever happen there. And yet, against all odds, suddenly that nest of respectable people is caught in a whirlwind of madness. Soon after graduation from high school, a few students become involved in the most clamorous crime of the time, the Circeo Murder. Edoardo Albinati was their schoolmate, and for forty years he kept the secrets of that “bad education.” Now he tells them, as if he were looking at his own image, mysterious and deformed, at the bottom of a water well. This gives birth to a powerful novel, which overwhelms the reader with the scope of its themes and the variety of adventures, big and small: from student songs to the most daring thoughts, from a meticulous reconstruction of aspects of Italian history and society to the confessions each of us could make when asked: “What did you really want when you were a kid?”
Adolescence, sex, religion and violence; money, friendship, revenge; legendary professors, priests, thugs, little geniuses, psychopaths, enigmatic girls, and terrorists. Mixing up real people with fictitious characters, Albinati builds a powerful, flowing narrative, which courageously faces the great existential questions and the problems of the time, and shows the other side of things. The catholic school is probably the book that was lacking in our culture.
EDOARDO ALBINATI
Edoardo Albinati was born in Rome in 1956 in an upper-middle-class family. He graduated from the catholic school San Leone Magno and later from Rome University. He started his career as a translator, a script adaptor and as an editor for the magazine Nuovi Argomenti. In 1988 he made his debut as a writer with a collection of short stories titled Arabeschi della vita morale. His 1989 novel Il polacco lavatore di vetri was adapted into the film La ballata dei lavavetri by Peter Del Monte. From the mid-1990s he works at the Rebibbia prison as a literature teacher. In 2002 and in 2004 he took part to two UN High Commission for Refugees missions in Afghanistan and Chad, also writing several reports published by the newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. In 2004 Albinati won the Viareggio Prize with the novel Svenimenti. In 2006 he co-wrote with actor Filippo Timi the novel Tuttalpiù muoio, which later Timi adapted into a stage drama. In 2015 he collaborated with Matteo Garrone for the screenplay of the fantasy film Tale of Tales. In 2016 he won the Strega Prize with the semi-autobiographical novel La scuola cattolica.
ANNA LAWTON
Anna Lawton has earned her PhD in Russian Literature at UCLA. She worked both in academia and in government. As a professor, she taught courses in literature, cinema and visual culture at Purdue University and Georgetown University. She was Deputy Director of Public Information and Media Outreach and the editor-in-chief of the magazine Connections for USIA at the American Embassy in Moscow. She also was the managing editor of the magazine Development Outreach at the World Bank in Washington, DC. She has served on the Advisory Film Committee of the National Gallery of Art, and directed conferences, seminars, film festivals, round tables, and editorial projects for the Kennan Institute, the National Gallery of Art, and the Italian Embassy in Washington DC, among others. She published three scholarly books and numerous scholarly essays and book chapters, as well as two novels, Family Album and Amy’s Story. Her book, Imaging Russia 2000: Film and Facts, has received the CHOICE Award as Outstanding Academic Title 2005. In 2003, she founded the publishing house New Academia Publishing, which is today a successful enterprise.
LORENZA PIERI
Studied at universities in Siena and Paris and earned a doctorate cum laude with a dissertation on the semiotics of text. She worked for fifteen years in the publishing industry (at Einaudi and minimum fax) as rights manager and foreign fiction editor. As a translator from French, she has translated numerous contemporary novels for major Italian publishing houses, such as Einaudi, minimum fax, Marsilio, and Ponte alle Grazie. She contributed to several anthologies and literary journals and authored the memoir Molto grossa, incredibilmente vicina (doppiozero, 2013). She has taken interviews and moderated conferences and round tables in Italy as well as abroad with international authors, such as Jonathan Lethem, Daniel Pennac, Joyce Carol Oates, Jhumpa Lahiri. She is the author of the novel, Isole minori, published by Edizioni e/o in 2016, which won the Premio Internazionale Capalbio and the XXX Premio Massarosa. The novel is now upcoming in Germany, Spain and Israel in translation. She contributes to the quarterly il Reportage and has a regular monthly column (Take the cannoli. Cronache dagli Stati Uniti) on the journal Linus.
LUCIA A. WOLF
Born in Eldoret, Kenya, Lucia Alma Wolf (née Braconi) spent most of her childhood in East Africa. Wolf graduated Cum Laude from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1992. She collaborated with the University of Rome’s Department of Medieval History and the Historical Institute for the Middle Ages, and published an article in the Annali di Storia delle Università italiane, 4 (2000). She also published the translation into Italian of Charles Radding, The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence. Pavia and Bologna 800-1150. In 1999, Wolf moved to the United States. She earned a BA with honors in English Literature from the University of Maryland and an MA in English Literature at George Mason University, where she won the Best Critical Essay Award. In 2014, she earned her Master’s Degree in Library Sciences at the University of Maryland and travelled to Saint Petersburg (Russia) to attend the First International Summer Library School. Currently, she is the permanent Reference Specialist for Italy at the European Division of the Library of Congress. She is responsible for the Italian collections and organizes cultural programs in partnership with the Embassy of Italy and and other cultural associations in D.C.
