Concorso Nazionale Trichiana Paese del Libro

The announcement for the 35th edition of the National Competition Trichiana Paese del Libro has been published.

This year's theme is The Fall.

 Those who have never fallen have never stood. This idea traverses the ancient and the modern, Western and Eastern cultures; it is a sort of common denominator of human wisdom. For some, the fall has been a crisis, for others a disease, and for still others, an accident, physical or metaphorical. But we have all experienced the fall, the difficulty of sharing our suffering, the fear of letting go. Perhaps it is only those who have gone through this experience that are able to give a fuller meaning to their journey.

Indeed, those who have risen again have not forgotten; rather, they have reclaimed their place in the world, laden with the awareness of their own strength and fragility. Drawing from the personal sphere, memory, experience, or pure imagination, one can narrate an emblematic and significant moment of our losing and finding ourselves, without forced happy endings and without the obligation to narrate solely the inner darkness that accompanies the fall.  

The president of the jury for Trichiana Paese del Libro for the 2025 edition will be Marco Balzano, a writer, winner of the Campiello Prize (2015), finalist for the Strega Prize (2018), and a writing teacher at the Belleville school in Milan. His latest novel, Bambino, set during the years of fascism in Trieste, has recently been published.

 The prize, established in 1991 based on an idea from the brothers Aldo, Mario, and Renzo Cortina, originally from Trichiana and booksellers in Milan and other cities in Northern Italy, reaches its 35th edition this year. The competition is dedicated to unpublished stories in Italian, and participants must be over 16 years of age. The deadline for submitting stories is set for 24:00 on April 14.

A new feature this year is that stories no longer need to be submitted via email but must be sent only through the dedicated form on the website www.trichianapaesedellibro.it

 The awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, July 26, and the entire preceding week will be dedicated to meetings with authors.