Waiting for PordenoneLegge in Lignano

Tuesday 2 September spotlights the writer Nadia Terranova, finalist of the 2025 Premio Strega: at the Pordenonelegge Preview in Lignano, she presents her latest novel “Quello che so di te” in conversation with the festival curator Alberto Garlini.

9:00 PM, Kursaal Congress Center

Free admission, subject to availability. Reservation recommended via the website pordenonelegge.it (section mypnlegge).

It is the most personal and intense novel by one of the leading voices of contemporary Italian fiction, page after page questioning the power of memory—both individual and collective—and our ability to cross it to imagine who we are.

At the heart of Quello che so di te is a woman who, faced with her newborn daughter, has only one certainty: from now on she can never again afford to lose her mind. Madness in her family is not an abstract thought but has a name: Venera, a great-grandmother who has always had a special place in her dreams. But who was Venera? What event led her to cross the threshold of the Mandalari, the psychiatric hospital of Messina, one March day? To discover it, one must confront the Family Mythology, which perhaps lies, perhaps errs, and distorts every episode with unreliable details.

This is not only a story of women but also of men—of fathers who can be frightened, run away, get lost. To recount the women and men of this family, their downfalls and their stubborn courage, there is no other choice but to accept the challenge: it is not enough to dream the past, you must go and take it back. Return to Messina, return to the walls where Venera was interned, and search for a passage between memories (or lies?) handed down, between invention and reality, between the verdicts of psychiatry and those of family tales.

An event organized by Fondazione Pordenonelegge.it in close collaboration with the Municipality of Lignano Sabbiadoro.