Ora che sono nato
His mother: neurotic, egocentric, takes up all the oxygen in the room. His father: egomaniac, unbelievably superstitious. His sister: a pathological liar who lives in a constant delusional state. His brother: the first bully in history with a stutter. And then there’s him, Nato, the youngest brother in the Goldino family: he just wants to be a Spice Girl.
While slurping a Calippo Fizz, on the background of a savage small town in the very South of Italy, he tells us the improbable (but still very possible) stories that marked his own childhood and teenagerhood during the Nineties – the stories of a boy who has always felt different from his family and has tried and tried again to escape his surroundings, failing miserably. Until he doesn’t.
Ruthless and moving, fearlessly walking the line between comedy and tragedy, Ora che sono Nato is the diary of a sentimental (dis)education, a journey that from the bottom of our soul takes us to the most surprising, and never easy, declaration of love: the one we feel for ourselves and for our own freedom.
Fiorino digs deep into his own experience and reaches the reader on a very intimate level, delicately but relentlessly pulling us in, to the point you almost don’t notice if you’re crying of laughter or desperation. Ora che sono Nato is the alter ego of Call Me by Your Name, stripped of the idyllic Italian finesse that nowadays exists only in Dolce & Gabbana ads – its paradox lies in its firm adherence to reality, without ever conceding defeat to it.
Maurizio Fiorino was born in Crotone in 1984. After an intense childhood in Calabria, he moved to New York where he attended the International Center of Photography. Since then he has been working as a photographer between the States and Italy. He worked with Annie Leibovitz and many international magazines, including GQ Magazine. In 2014 Gallucci published his debut, Amodio, which received praise from critics and public alike. Two years later Gallucci published Fondo Gesù, his second novel.
