Author: Vito di Battista.
Tomorrow, Tuesday at 7 p.m., the Instituto Italiano de Cultura de Madrid (calle Mayor, 86), in collaboration with the publishing house Feltrinelli and the association CASA ABRUZZO – La Casa degli Abruzzesi in Spagna, holds a meeting with the author Vito di Battista, candidate for the 80th edition of the Premio Strega 2026, in which he will present his book Donde caen los cometas (Where the comets fall). Free admission with prior reservation until full capacity. Meeting in Italian.
During the meeting, the author will talk with Marco Nardini, founder of the Otago Literary Agency, which has been operating for over twenty years in the editorial and cultural sector.
Where the comets fall tells how an atypical family saga of a small village in Abruzzo becomes a mirror of an entire country. Abruzzo, 1938. On the coast of the trabocchi, three hundred steps above the sea, the dead people of the village take the floor to tell the story of Bianca, a child who grows up with her father Olimpo – poet and journalist by passion, civil registrar by profession – and two mothers. One is Anita, the woman who gave birth to her, wife of Olympus, who lost her left arm when she was young and has always strived not to depend on anyone. The other is Emma, a “doubly disgraced” country girl. Repudiated by her family and forced to live in a barn, Emma is hired by Olympus to breastfeed Bianca, after having had to give up her own child for adoption.
What unfolds on the pages is not only the fragile and ambiguous coexistence of this family, but also the story of a small village that, during World War II, becomes a reflection of all Italy: from the fighting on the Gustav Line to the Nazi-occupation.fascist, from the Resistance of those who remain until the rebirth of the seventies, when secrets come to light and change the fate of those who survived.
The writing of Where the comets fall hears, welcomes and returns. With a deeply incarnate language, in which Italian blends with the rhythm and flavor of the Abruzzese dialect, Vito di Battista combines the orality of family stories with narrative invention, magical realism with verist tension, transforming their private history into a shared narrative of care and forgiveness. “By land or sea, in the end it’s the same: there is always a little empty space to call your own, in some corner already known or unknown.”
Vito Di Battista was born in 1986 and grew up in a village of Abruzzo, three hundred steps above the sea. He studied Comparative Literatures in Florence and in Bologna, where he currently resides.
To attend the meeting it is necessary to make a reservation by writing to confirmaciones.iicmadrid@gmail.com, indicating the name, surname and telephone number of all the people for whom registration is requested and specifying in the subject “Vito Di Battista”.
