Who were Walter Benjamin and Luigi Pirandello looking for in Sanremo in the 1930s? One took refuge at the Villa Verde guesthouse run by his ex-wife Dora, while the other pursued a dream of love named Marta Abba, owner of a pied-à-terre in the old town. But could Benjamin and Pirandello have met? And what would they have said to each other?

Walter Benjamin, German philosopher, literary critic and sociologist from a Jewish family (Berlin, 1892 – Port Bou, Spain, 1940). His philosophical reflection, marked by a strong anti-systematicity and oriented towards theological themes drawn from the Kabbalistic tradition, was initially focused on language, partly due to his work as a translator. He continued his literary essay writing, but then devoted himself more to aesthetic and sociological issues in art; his most significant contribution in this field is the famous essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) from 1936.

Luigi Pirandello, playwright and novelist (Agrigento, 1867 – Rome, 1936). A highly regarded writer, he revolutionised 20th-century theatre, becoming one of the greatest playwrights of all time. Although inspired by Sicilian Verismo, his work reveals an anguished, relativistic view of life and the world, anticipating definitively modern themes. However, it was theatre that spread his fame far and wide: from his early bourgeois comedies, in his so-called second manner, the drama of being and appearing rose to become a symbol and allegory of existence.

It all begins with a trip to Latvia. An aeroplane, a wait, a very long sentence that does not stop, made of images and sounds, of places and thoughts, of uprooting and taking possession of the alien, this sentence that sings while it tells, that sees while it closes its eyes, that takes us with it and never leaves us alone, never behind, never distracted, that however relieves us from the present and invites us to the fun of the journey, of the unexpected encounter, in a Latvia that like a sphere reflects the whole universe on its chrome surface.

Sara Fruner, born in Riva del Garda, graduated in English and specialised in literary translation. She has lived in New York for the last nine years, where she taught Italian at New York University and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Since 2025, she has been living in Florence, where she continues to teach Italian. Her debut novel, L'istante largo (Bollati Boringhieri, 2020 and 2022), which earned her second place in the 2021 Severino Cesari Opera Prima National Prize, was followed by La notte del bene (Bollati Boringhieri, 2022) and La luce laggiù (Neri Pozza, 2025). In poetry, she alternates between volumes in Italian and English: Bitter Bites from Sugar Hills (Bordighera Press, 2018), Lucciole in palmo alla notte (Supernova, 2019), La rossa goletta (Crocetti, 2024). Her articles on cinema, art and literature have appeared in the magazines La Voce di New York, CinematoGraphie, Magazzino 23 and Brick, and since 2024 she has been writing “Cine-gate”, a film review column on the culture page of Gate. Her translations of prose and poetry include works by Dionne Brand, Monique Truong, Sello Duiker, Raj Rao, Marie-Helene Bertino, Jane Hirshfield, and W. S. Merwin. She has been accepted into numerous residencies for writers and translators, including the Bogliasco Foundation, the Emily Harvey Foundation, The Studios of Key West, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Übersetzerhaus Looren, and Casa delle Traduzioni in Rome.

One of the most singular figures in Italian post-World War II art, ‘an artist who moves in a vacuum’ as Germano Celant defined him, Prini seems to elude, perhaps intentionally, any possible definition. Starting with over forty works from 1966 to 2016, the core of the first retrospective since his death, held at the Fondazione Merz from 28 October 2019 to 9 February 2020, this volume activates a critical and historical reflection on the experience of one of the most interesting and discussed representatives of Arte Povera. A transgressive position, that of Prini, or if we want orthodox towards artistic practice and the codes of the art system that teaches the possibility of grasping the value of contradiction and doubt. A passage of art and the artist into life, or rather as he himself defined ‘not action but biological extension of the self’, into contemporaneity that distinguishes a work of extreme topicality and ready for confrontation with the new generations.

The book, edited by Beatrice Merz, includes an unpublished text by Luca Lo Pinto, a historical and never published dialogue between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and a rich anthology with texts by Adachiara Zevi, Germano Celant and Lorenzo Benedetti. The book benefits from a rich iconographic apparatus, with over 150 images of works and documents.

Emilio Prini (Stresa, 1943 - Rome, 2016) was a leading figure in Arte Povera, one of the most influential and radical recent art movements, strongly connected to the political and social context of the second half of the 20th century.

Approximately where the 44th parallel North intersects the 8th meridian East, there is a place of memory that Marco Drago brings to life on the page with masterly skill. Drago summons his human beings into a kind of living nativity scene that has a Brewery instead of the Child. As much as this author's writing has an immediate grasp on the reader, skimming in its snappy journeys, concrete to the point of being decoded first by bodies and only later by minds, the outcome of each of his texts contains a compressed and compact worldview and a vision of life that is painful but amused, desolate but sumptuous, sarcastic but passionate - desperate and mystical.

Drago (like all those with a pure talent for writing) is inimitable in many ways. In particular, he has a mysterious ability that allows him to totally overturn the relationship between what we mean by ‘person’ and what we mean by ‘character’, i.e. between his pages live and meet people who everything suggests were in real life (beautiful) characters. Each one with a tic, or a fantasy, or an unmentionable disappointment, or a weakness, or a stigma, or an identity adherence to transient social roles, or an invincible drive, an artistic talent to dissipate, a falling in love.

In his nativity scene, people of beautiful interiority coexist with the more drifting outcasts. All in the bowl of life and time shredder. All loved and mocked in a single gesture by the author. We readers also converge around the brewery, because we feel that there is a buried pulsation there and perceive that only a writer like Marco Drago can make it so immediate.

Dry, poignant, definitive is the finale of this small and universal Bohème.

Marco Drago is a writer, translator and radio presenter. He has published: L'amico del pazzo e altri racconti (Feltrinelli, 1998), Cronache da chissà dove (Minimum Fax, 2000), Domenica sera (Feltrinelli, 2001), Zolle (Feltrinelli, 2005), La vita moderna è rumenta (Feltrinelli, 2012), La prigione grande quanto un paese (Barbera Editore, 2013), Baladin, la birra artigianale è tutta colpa di Teo, with Teo Musso (Feltrinelli, 2013), Sesso calcio e rock and roll (Feltrinelli, 2014) and Innamorato (Bollati Boringhieri, 2023). He has translated many books from English for major Italian publishers. Between 2000 and 2025 he wrote and hosted radio programmes with Gaetano Cappa for RadioRai, Radio24 and RSI. He is part of the artistic factory Istituto Barlumen.

This is the enchanting story of a friendship between an adult and a child that begins with a shared love of comic books (Asterix, Alan Ford, Tex Willer). The adult is the author, the child is Bill Clinton, i.e. his first name is Bill Clinton (surname is another).

The story told here already in itself attracts the reader's sympathy: it is curious, original in its quiet everydayness, simultaneously and inseparably funny and serious. But since (we always tend to forget) no story exists if it is not told, it is especially important to say that it is Ugo Cornia's way of narrating that generates the enchantment. His voice, inimitable, sounds in every sentence, in every juxtaposition, in every concealed burst of intelligence. His writing, in all his texts, is a kind of song that resonates with discretion but infinite precision in our literature. It is made up of such personal timbres, melodies, prosodic trends and rhythms that this author is more identifiable than his fingerprints. It grabs you without you realising it, lulls you, leads you, bamboozles you.

Writing and voice are one and the same in Cornia, the same breath, and always when read at the same time heard. With an absolute degree of subtlety and purity, an indefinable humour little by little, unhurriedly, even wistfully, he offers us a further lens through which to observe life and experience, as if it were the precious gift of a gentle hypnotist.

Ugo Cornia was born in Carpi and lives in Modena. A graduate in philosophy from Bologna, he has taught in various high schools and has taught Italian for many years at I.I.S. Venturi in Modena. His debut novel Sulla felicità a oltranza, published in 1999 with Sellerio, placed him among the most interesting contemporary Italian narrators. His works include: Modena è piccolissima, illustrated by Giuliano Della Casa (EDT, 2009); Autobiografia della mia infanzia (Topipittori, 2010); Il professionale. Avventure scolastiche (Feltrinelli, 2012); Sono sociavole fino all'eccesso. Vita di Montaigne (Marcos y Marcos, 2015); La vita in ordine alfabetico (La Nave di Teseo, 2021) and Le storie di mia zia (Quodlibet, 2023).