The ‘Friuli Venezia Giulia’ literary prize goes to the writer Alessandro Marzo Magno

«The Friuli Venezia Giulia Literary Prize ‘The tale of places and time’ recognizes the commitment of an author, Alessandro Marzo Magno, who has Venice in his heart, but an open gaze on the Adriatic, its human stories and events, its hinterland, when necessary on the world – state the reasons for the award – Excellent narrator of lagoon events, he demonstrates careful attention to characters, always told with prose alive. Due to these characteristics, and the seriousness in consulting the documents, Alessandro Marzo Magno is the ideal writer to convey a story set in the less celebrated, but no less fascinating Friuli Venezia Giulia: the Marano lagoon and its immediate surroundings. Let’s get ready to read when and why Marano Lagunare was the center of the world for two years.” The previous editions of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Literary Prize ‘The tale of places and time’ had been awarded to the historian and essayist Valerio Massimo Manfredi, then to the writers Melania Mazzucco, Marco Balzano, Mariolina Venezia Diego Marani and Giuseppe Lupo.

Alessandro Marzo Magno will receive the Friuli Venezia Giulia Literary Prize The tale of places and time on the occasion of the 27th edition of pordenonelegge Book and freedom festival, Saturday 19 September, at 3.30 pm, in the Regione Auditorium in Pordenone. On this occasion he will present the historical story “When Marano was the navel of the world”, composed as the winner of the Prize, to be released during the days of the festival by Italo Svevo editions (60 pages, 15 euros).

Regarding the award, the president of the Prize Jury, Massimiliano Fedriga, governor of the autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, declared: «the will of the Region to invest in culture as a tool for knowledge and valorisation of the territory. Through the gaze of Alessandro Marzo Magno, Marano Lagunare becomes the starting point to tell a significant page of our history and to restore value to a heritage of traditions, identity and memory that belongs to the whole of Friuli Venezia Giulia. This is the deepest meaning of the Award: entrusting great authors with the task of describing our places, making them even better known and closer to citizens and visitors”.

And the vice-president of the autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and councilor for Culture and Sport, Mario Anzil, underlined: «Every territory holds stories that deserve to be passed down and literature has the extraordinary ability to make them alive and universal. With this Award we continue to build a narrative of Friuli Venezia Giulia made up of places, communities and memory, enhancing realities that represent the authenticity of our region. The story dedicated to Marano Lagunare enriches this journey, demonstrating how culture can strengthen the sense of belonging and transform historical memory into a resource for the future.»

«The 7th edition of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Literary Prize – adds the president of Fondazione Pordenonelegge.it, Michelangelo Agrusti – projects us into a peculiar area of the region, one of the many “souls” of this “small compendium of the universe, Alpine plain and lagoon sixty miles from the northat midday”, to quote Ippolito Nievo. Marano, its territory and its community, demonstrate to all of us the importance of promoting one’s heritage of traditions and culture, to aim for harmonious development and invest in the future of the community. And this is also the meaning of the Award that we celebrate here today”.

The artistic director of Pordenonelegge, Gian Mario Villalta, observes: «Alessandro Marzo Magno has the rare talent of knowing how to transform the precision of the historical document into a vibrant narrative prose, capable of restoring the living voice of the past. With the unpublished story dedicated to Marano Lagunare, the writer will enrich the mosaic of stories dedicated to the “places” and “times” of Friuli Venezia Giulia with a further piece, accompanying us on the discovery of an extraordinarily evocative place, a strip of land where water and time merge Venezia Giulia unusual and with a special charm: confirming that great literature can identify the center of the world even in less celebrated territories, guardians of a precious collective memory that narration preserves for future generations”

The historical tale “When Marano was the center of the world” takes us back five centuries, when – in the two-year period 1542-1543 – the town on the Friulian lagoon found itself at the center of a controversy which concerned not only Venice and the Habsburg Empire, but also France and the Church, in which Marano becomes a sort of Gdańsk of the Adriatic: a place of vital importance contested between the most important European powers brio and irony that moment, moving with elegance through the times and the topography of the lagoon.

Alessandro Marzo Magno was born in 1962 in Venice, where he grew up before arriving in Milan, his current city. He was a journalist and was the foreign editor of the weekly “Diario” for almost ten years, today he collaborates with the cultural page of the “Gazzettino”. He has written over twenty books historical disclosure. His latest work, published by Laterza, is entitled “The invention of money. When finance spoke Italian”.