Francesca Melandri

Francesca Melandri was born in Rome in 1964. She worked as a screenwriter, contributing to the Adalbert Stifter adaptation »Bergkristall«, the fairy tale epic »Fantaghirò« based on Italo Calvino, and the popular TV series »Don Matteo« featuring Terrence Hill in the titular role. She also directed the documentary »Vera« (2010), about a Holocaust survivor who was the only member of her large family from Zagreb to escape extermination and who now, in her old age, devotes herself to breeding thoroughbreds near Rome. Her debut novel »Eva dorme« (2010; Eng. »Eva Sleeps«, 2016) is set in South Tyrol, where Melandri spent many years. When the protagonist’s long-lost stepfather requests a final meeting as he lays dying, she travels from Bolzano to Reggio Calabria at the southernmost tip of Italy’s boot. During the journey, she reflects on the life of her single mother and the tumultuous history of the Alto Adige region. Through these reflections, she reveals the profound influence that ongoing political conflict had on intimate relationships and even the language used among each other, highlighting the empowerment and perseverance of a self-reliant woman. Her novel »Più alto del mare« (2012; tr: Higher Than the Sea ) reveals the existential significance of a long-ago sequence of encounters: in a stormy night in the late seventies, a mountain farmer and an early retired philosophy professor visiting a secluded prison island meet a prison officer who feels as isolated on the island as the prisoners suffering under their misdeeds and daily humiliations. Melandri’s multi-generational novel »Sangue giusto« (2017; tr: Legitimate Blood) addresses Italy’s often-repressed colonial interventions and their connections to current migration movements. When Ilaria, a teacher, is approached outside her apartment in Rome by a young African man claiming to be her nephew – his passport even bearing the name of her lifelong elusive, introverted father – she is confronted with her family’s and nation’s unresolved past. To solve the mystery of these familial ties, the protagonist must engage with Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia – complexities that ultimately shed new light on lingering feuds as well as Europe’s responsibility for current refugee movements. The author has been awarded numerous national and international prizes, including the Premio Rapallo Carige and the Premio Selezione Campiello; in 2018, she was a finalist for the Premio Strega. Her works have been translated into many European languages. Her »Letter from the future« about the coronavirus pandemic, which appeared in »The Guardian« in March 2020, has been translated into 35 languages and published worldwide. She will deliver the opening speech at the 2023 International Literature Festival Berlin. Melandri lives in Rome.