Oliva Denaro

"I am not attracted to weddings. That is why I do not walk in the streets, but run: male interest is like the wind, but with hands - and look, it will reach me at any moment." Viola Ardone's novel is about the formation of personality. About a girl who wanted to be free in an era when being born a woman was a sentence. The author amazingly turns a real story into fiction, into a narrative about the contradictions of love, the relationship between fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, about a desire that is both attractive and frightening, especially if it is realized by force. About the author: Viola Ardone was born in Naples in 1974 into a family of teachers. She received a higher philological education at the local University of Federico II, one of the oldest in the world. After graduating, she worked for a time in a publishing house producing educational literature, then began teaching Latin and Italian in a high school. Ardone's debut novel, La ricetta del cuore in subbuglio (A Recipe for a Heart in Turmoil), was published in 2012, followed by Una rivoluzione sentimentale (A Sentimental Revolution, 2016). In 2017, Ardone wrote a story in verse for children, Cyrano dal naso strano (Cyrano with the Strange Nose), illustrated by Luca Dalisi. From 2013 to 2018, as part of the writers' workshop at the Juvenile Penal Institute on the island of Nisidia, she participated in the compilation of several collections of short stories and in work on the novel L'ultima prova (The Last Test), created by the I Nisidiani collective. Ardone is best known for her novels The Children's Train and Oliva Denaro, published by the famous Italian publishing house Einaudi and subsequently translated into several dozen languages. The books became international bestsellers, with a total circulation of over 360,000 copies. In addition to books, Viola writes articles for periodicals, including Corriere del Mezzogiorno, la Repubblica, L'Espresso.