Breakfast with Wu Ming I

“What strikes me most, in reading the reviews of my novel, or in listening, during public presentations, to the opinions of those who have read it, is how often images of hope recur. Not a generic hope, not the ‘wait and hope’ of dragging on. No, it is more a trust in the possibility of rediscovering friendships, of redeeming our lives starting from relationships, from social bonds. A bond that, in the novel, is reformed by reclaiming a relationship with our territories, which for too long we have ‘inhabited reluctantly,’ as a friend who is an architect/designer told me, to say that our living is forced, habitual, unreflective. More and more, the harsh blows of the climate crisis are making us open our eyes, revealing the alienation and ignorance with which we live in places increasingly reduced to mere spaces, spaces to cross following trajectories on which we delude ourselves into having some control, and which, instead, are entirely compulsory.

Who still knows the life of waterways? The majority of those who live next to them take them for granted, then floods, flash floods, or distressing droughts surprise us, and we realize that they are not at all to be taken for granted. I knew I had written a ‘geographical novel’: I had not realized to what extent telling a story of re-knowledge of a territory – in this specific case, the Po Delta – was already, in every way, telling a story of new bonds being formed, of convergences and new communality among people. I realize this now, thanks to readers and audiences. In a time of pervasive anxieties and overwhelming and immense threats to the environment, to the world, to life itself, I am happy to have written a book that brushes against the suffocating reality that comes to us with the news, and elicits countertrend reactions. I can never thank enough those who help me every day to better understand the meaning of my work.” Wu Ming 1

We will be wisely welcomed by Chiara Alpago Novello from 10:30 for breakfast with coffee, tea, all the good things that are needed to start the day well: cookies made with organic flours baked in a wood oven, yogurt and local cheeses, fruit jams from the garden, and whatever the awakening and the season inspire (for example, chiffon). At 12:30 light lunch, greetings, and toasts. In between, chats, questions, beautiful ideas. As much as you want.