Nina sull’argine
An engineer on her first important project, Caterina (known as Nina to her friends) is in charge of the building of a river bank in the north of Italy. Young and surrounded by an all-male ensemble, she is faced with constant difficulties: surveyors and council members’ demands, technical hurdles, complaints from environmentalists, responsibilities towards her worker’ safety – not to mention a love story gone awry and a troubled bond with her Sicilian homeland.Caterina’s whole life soon turns into a construction site drenched in fog, as if she’s the one in need of some sort of river bank in the first place. She is more and more tempted to resign from the job, but then people around her slowly stop to be defined only by their roles and begin to look like real persons. And as seasons and landscapes change, and the river bank’s construction draws to a close, Caterina’s day of reckoning with her own ghosts forces her to live and learn before she can move on with her life.
Born in 1971, Veronica Galletta worked as a mechanical engineer for many years. Her unpublished novel Le isole di Norman has been shortlisted for the Italo Calvino Prize. Published in 2020 by Italo Svevo, this novel won with unanimous vote the Premio Campiello Opera Prima, the most prestigious award in Italy for first novels. Her new novel Nina sull’argine (minimum fax, 2021) has been shortlisted for 2022 Premio Strega. It won the 2022 Premio Letteratura d’Impresa.
