Brussels Book Fair: Marta Barone

Foire du Livre in Brussels, Place de l’Europe. Sunday 2 April, 1 p.m.

Meeting with authors Marta Barone and José Morella, moderated by Maddalena Vaglio Tanet.

Marta Barone was born in Turin in 1987. She is a translator and publishing consultant, and since 2017 has been the editor of Marina Jarre‘s work. Her first novel, Città sommersa (Bompiani, 2020), candidate for the Premio Strega 2020 and winner of the Premio Vittorini 2020, is currently being published in several countries. The novel has as its backdrop the Turin of the “Lead Years”, and is based on the story of the author’s father, L.B., a young protester in 1968, who later became a doctor and militant in the “Servire il Popolo” party. Prosecuted in the 1980s for armed gangs because he was accused of treating a wounded member of the Front Line and thus of being part of that terrorist group, he was later completely exonerated.

José Morella (1972) lives in Barcelona and teaches creative writing and narrative techniques. He writes to make visible those structures and privileges that often remain hidden in systems of power. His latest work, West End (Ediciones Siruela, 2020), is a documentary novel based on the experiences of his maternal family. Among other things, it is a testimony to the cruelty with which Franco’s regime treated people with mental health problems.

Maddalena Vaglio Tanet (1985) studied literature at the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale. She then moved to New York for a doctorate at Columbia University. She lives in Berlin and works as a literary scout. She has just published her first novel Tornare dal bosco (Marsilio, 2023).