The Possible Book and the Castellana Caves
present
the third edition of the cultural meeting series
EPISODES
with
Jonathan Coe, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Erri De Luca, Simonetta Agnello Hornby
Castellana Caves (BA)
Grave – Anelli square
March 18, April 7, May 6, and May 20, 2016
Following the success of the first two editions, "Episodi" returns from March 18th to May 20th, the series of cultural events organized by "Il libro possibile" in collaboration with the Castellana Caves. The famous underground caves, unique in the world, will provide the backdrop for the four literary events. Guests and protagonists of the event will be four great authors: Jonathan Coe, Piergiorgio Odifreddi, Erri De Luca, and Simonetta Agnello Hornby.
A coherent choice, strongly desired by the artistic director of "Il libro possibile," for what these authors represent through their works and their lives: a human and professional journey of remarkable intellectual tension and ethical commitment, through which the beauty of literature becomes truth and action.
"Literature as a tool for political education, for observing reality, and for interpreting politics." This is the statement released by artistic director Rosella Santoro regarding the first panel that will open the festival. Jonathan Coe's writing, through the beauty of his vivid, ironic, and satirical words, and a story constructed with a biting and biting pen, represents the truth of the disturbing world we live in, which takes on the face of a Great Britain from 2003 to 2015.
The third edition of "Episodes" will have a single theme, "Let's Draw Beauty," and will focus on the main issues addressed daily by the media and Italian politics, starting with drilling in our Adriatic Sea. The referendum will take place on April 17th, Puglia has mobilized against the authorizations for oil companies, and Libro Possibile has also been supporting those who say "no" to those who would deface our landscape and sea for a year now. It's not just drilling, though. With Piergiorgio Odifreddi, for example, we'll also be discussing beauty.
Mathematics in art and nature: "A strong and resounding voice," says Santoro, "that reminds us of the need to defend the beauty of our land and the perfection of nature." The program continues with Erri De Luca, "whose poetic words," Santoro continues, "have become one with his civic commitment as an intellectual deeply rooted in the local area." Finally, Simonetta Agnello Hornby, "a writer committed to the preservation and protection of important causes, and whose latest novel traces the beauty of a love story set against the historical backdrop of the Italy that became a nation," concludes the curator of the event. These are just a few ideas from which to begin reflection and discussion with the guests and the public at the Castellana Caves, in the province of Bari.
THE MEETINGS
March 18, 2016 – Jonathan Coe – “Number 11”
The stories of Number 11's two protagonists, Rachel and Alison, two girls growing up in the age of reality TV and social media, are masterfully intertwined with those of the surviving characters from Jonathan Coe's most famous novel: The Winshaws. Rachel, a recent Oxford graduate and somewhat distraught, finds herself catapulted into the world of tutors for the super-rich, while Alison's dreams of becoming an artist are brutally trampled by a spiteful journalist. Jonathan Coe's latest novel, his eleventh, is a story of our times: from the suicide of David Kelly, the scientist who exposed Tony Blair's lies about the Iraq war, to the austere years of Britain as we know it today. Coe uses all his ingenuity, his keen sense of satire, and his powers of observation to hold up a mirror to us the new, absurd, and disturbing world we live in.
April 7, 2016 – PIERGIORGIO ODIFREDDI – “Mathematical Beauty in Art and Nature”
The theme of the meeting will be mathematical beauty in art and nature. The discussion will draw inspiration from one of Odifreddi's latest books, "The Museum of Numbers. From Zero to Infinity. Stories from the World to Mathematics." What is a number that man can understand? And what is man that can understand a number? These questions were posed in 1960 by neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch, evidently dissatisfied with the many rigid and empty definitions that had been reeled off by philosophers until then. In this book, Piergiorgio Odifreddi approaches these two questions with a more fluid and practical approach: instead of trying futilely to tell us what a number is in the abstract, he helpfully shows us a series of concrete numbers. He has chosen around fifty of those best suited to being described, and he illustrates them as if he were a museum guide, showing us the global structure and local details of each. Strolling through the paintings in this exhibition, the reader will encounter the small, large numbers from 0 to 9, realizing that he doesn't know them as well as he thought. He will discover the fascination of numbers he thought were uninteresting, like 42 or 1729. He will try to imagine numbers so large as to be almost elusive and inconceivable.
May 6, 2016 – ERRI DE LUCA – “We Design Beauty”
Drawing beauty will be the guiding thread of the meeting with Erri De Luca. The discussion will take its cue from one of the author's latest works, "La faccia delle nuvole." His name is Iosèf, which in his language means: he who adds. He added his faith in the girl he loves, he believed in her. He added himself as a husband, to her who was pregnant, not with him. He added himself as a second father to that son, "who appeared in their midst from a labor of stars." They fell like confetti on the night he was born. Through their living voices, through their joys and worries as parents and spouses—and through the voice of a narrator who follows them with compassion from Bethlehem to Jerusalem and then for the thirty-three subsequent Easters—we are welcomed into the intimate and light-filled circle of the Holy Family. At the birth of Yeshu, the scent of fragrant bread wafts through the cave, where the shepherds and the Magi flock. Whoever holds him in their arms already recognizes a resemblance in his face, imposing a desire, an expectation on the newborn: to Iosef it seems like Miriam's face reflected in the water, to Miriam it resembles "newborns of every and every lineage alive on the face of the world," to one of the shepherds it seems like festive bread, "the skin is a thread of oil, underneath is a slurry," old Simone recognizes in him "the goal of many appointments, the sprouting form of a finite wait." Ieshu's face is as shifting as the face of clouds in the eyes of the world, and from that world Iosef stubbornly tries to defend him, to oppose misunderstanding, to silence the tumult of similarities. After In the Name of the Mother, Erri De Luca collects in these pages the father's love, the effort to care and protect: until the day when it is the son himself, now an adult, who withdraws.
May 20, 2016 – SIMONETTA AGNELLO HORNBY – “Bitter Coffee”
"Bitter Coffee" is a story that unfolds from the early 20th century to the Second World War. We are in the province of Agrigento, in the early 1900s. Her large, deep-set almond-shaped eyes, her regular features, her thick brown hair: Maria's beauty casts a spell on anyone who gazes upon it, just as it does for Baron Pietro Sala, who falls in love at first sight and asks for her hand without regard for a dowry. Maria is only fifteen, Pietro is thirty-four; he is a noble bon vivant who loves travel, gambling, and women; she comes from a socialist family with high ideals but limited means. Partly to relieve her parents of a burden, partly because she is attracted by Pietro's seductive ways, Maria agrees to become his wife and leave the Canitti home, her loved ones, and her friend Giosuè, whom she considers "an older brother. Or rather, more." Her marriage to Pietro, despite the many differences that divide them and the lukewarm reception of the Sala family, proves to be a happy choice. And beyond all self-consciousness, Maria discovers true love. A multitude of tormented characters move around her, transforming this portrait into a choral fresco, against which we recognize the great changes of the first half of the twentieth century: the Sicilian Fasci, the economic crisis, the rise of Fascism, the racial laws, the war. In the foreground, the story of a female character who, from a fragile girl at the mercy of men's choices, becomes a woman capable of openly dictating the conditions of her own life and her own happiness.
