Michele Mari wins the Strega Award with i "Stone guests"

With the novel “The stone guests“ Michele Mari won the 80th edition of Witch Award. The final evening was celebrated, on the occasion of this special anniversary, at the Campidoglio in Rome.

The 2026 Strega Prize goes to Michele Mari

The total votes cast were 643 (equal to 80.4% of those entitled) out of 800 jurors. Mari got 190 votes, prevailing over Matteo Nucci with “Plato. A love story” (Feltrinelli), 152 votes; Bianca Pitzorno with “La sonnambula” (Bompiani), with 84 votes; Alcide Pierantozzi with “Lo sbilico” (Einaudi), 78 votes; Teresa Ciabatti with “Donnaregina” (Mondadori), 75 votes; Elena Rui“Widows of Camus” (L’orma), 64 votes.

Mari’s novel also overcomes the controversy over the Murgia case.

The book of Michele Mari stronger than the controversies generated by the words that the Milanese writer would have pronounced on Michela Murgia. “The stone guests” (Einaudi) won the eightieth edition of Witch Awardafter he had made it his own a month and a half earlier Young Witch.

“A career achievement recognition, I have written better”

“I believe that with this book of mine I have aroused fun among my readers, starting from a serious situation. And I believe that this award is a career recognition, exactly like that: I don’t think, in fact, that it is my best title, rather I think I have given the best of myself in other books”.

A moving and joyful book

Mari wrote a moving and playful bookrevealing with wicked fun the drives that hide within friendship. Because in this story, before an unpredictable ending, the opposite of what the proverb says applies: whoever loses a friend finds a treasure.

A volume also dominated by a fundamental question: is the destiny of each of us really already written? This is what the former students of III A think when, having passed the final exam, they sign the “unfortunate pact” that will bind them until the last day.

After all, school time is the only time remain still: even after thirty years it won’t be wrinkles or extra kilos that will counterfeit the shape of an old classmate.

But when the demon of competition and the mirage of a fabulous prize the variables multiply. And so an agreement born almost as a joke turns into a no-holds-barred challenge to stay alive as much as possible.

Biography and works of Michele Mari

Michele Mariwinner of the 2026 Strega Prize, was born in Milan in 1955, is writerItalian philologist, translator and professor of Italian literature at the University of Milan. He has collaborated with newspapers such as Corriere della Sera, la Repubblica and Il Manifesto. Among his works From beast to beast (1989), Filologia dell’amfibio (1995), Tu, sanguinosa childhood (1997), Tutto il ferro della tower Eiffel (2002), the volume of critical essays Demons and puff pastry (2004; new updated ed. 2017), the poetic collection One hundred love poems in Ladyhawke (2007), the collection of short stories Fantasmagonia (2012), Verderame (2008), Roderick Duddle (2014), Asterusher. Autobiography for fetishes (with F. Pernigo, 2015), Private legend (2017), the poetic collection Dalla cripta (2019), The majestic ruins of Sferopoli (2021), Locus desperatus (2024) and “The stone guests” (2025).