Sirene
Samuel, who oversees a tank where mermaids for the production of \’sea meat\’ are bred and fed, lets himself be tempted by the most dangerous of pleasures. He joins a female siren, barely escaping her instinctive reaction: devouring the male after intercourse, as the mantises do. Mia – half siren and half human – was born from that union, and perhaps a new conscious species will originate from her. In Sirene Laura Pugno tells the end of the world of humans, forced to live in the dark and in underwater cities – because light has become an enemy, causing \’black cancer\’ -, dominated by international mafias, exhausted by the consumption of every planetary resource. If what matters is not the life of an individual and not even the life of a species, but the life of intelligence, \’the passing of the baton to another species to entrust the management of the world is a way out of the human, from the impasse of its civilization, but also its superior realization, an overcoming, a self-annulment and a paradoxical salvation\’.
Laura Pugno was born in Rome. She published a book of short stories, Sleepwalking (Sironi, 2002), and four novels: Sirene (Einaudi,2007), Quando verrai (minimum fax,2009), Antartide (minimum fax,2011), La caccia (Ponte alle Grazie, 2012) and La ragazza selvaggia (Marsilio, 2016). Poetry: Il colore oro (Le Lettere, 2007), La mente paesaggio (Perrone, 2010) and Bianco (Nottetempo,2016).
