Interview
Dr. Lunigiana will present the new book “La Cascina delle Piane” in Place Cavour on Friday 25 August.
AULLA – Matteo Manzin belongs to the category of debut writers, such as the lawyers Gianrico Carofilho and Gianluca Arrighi or the doctor Andrea Vitali. A surgeon, Manzin worked at the S. Andrea Hospital in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of La Spezia. In 2019, the first literary divertissement: Garden in the sky with diamonds. Two years after the continuation Our South Seas. As with other plurimater newcomers, it was the environment in which they grew up that inspired, starting from the bar table – not a random bar, but the Cavour bar in Aulla – an adventure that unravels from the center of Aulla through the great historical events of the 20th century around the world. , from the Gulf of Poets to India, from Gragnola to Cuba. On Friday, August 25, at 9 pm, the author returns to the heart of Aulla, to Piazza Cavour, to present the third novel of the trilogy, always published by Giuseppe Chiappini Editore: Cascina delle Piane. This time, the main characters, Maurizio and Elisabeth, move into the thirties in the Latin American rhythm of the famous republican song. On these notes, Elisabeth and Maurizio will meet again after a tragic separation. As with the other two publications, The Doctor of Olle sold out ahead of the Montereggio Book Festival. “There was a lot of anticipation,” Manzin says modestly.
From Aulla, the characters crossed all of Europe and beyond and throughout the twentieth century. The trilogy is closed, how do you feel about letting these characters go?
“Every author gets attached to the characters they create, so a kind of empathy is also inevitable. Detachment is difficult, but it’s encouraging that they continue to live on in readers’ imaginations. Many women confessed to me that they would like to be like Elizabeth, who in the evolution of her personality is aristocratic, cosmopolitan, nonconformist, cultured, energetic, independent, stubbornly wild in some ways, always in search of a new, new. a fullness of life endowed with prestige, contacts, experience and ideas, strung between sensitivity and ethical tension. I’m glad I created my favorite characters.”
If the trilogy were a movie, who would be the main character today?
“Difficult. Perhaps for Maurizio, I would choose Liam Neeson or Clive Owen, who are beautiful, but also popular for their facial features. It is more difficult for Elizabeth, she is … better for everyone to imagine her the way they want, maybe Julianne Moore young woman … who could imagine in her big and haughty green eyes a political agitator?
And for Ernestine, Maurizio’s handyman?
“The actress who plays her can only come from Lunigiana. It is the voice of the dialect, the music of the people. We all know Ernestine, waiting at the slanted door. It is almost an archetype with its concreteness “Fev buckets”, “Fev tokar”.
Seeing and touching is history. The universal of the barricades, of civil wars, which is mentioned in the bibliography that concludes the volume, but also equally universal of the most intimate human misfortunes that have no bibliography but have experience. This is the male protagonist, a doctor, who is led by Maurizio Perrone to preserve and convey the memory of all the facts told.
As for Dr. Manzin, will he continue to cultivate writing?
“I don’t know, I don’t think so, I think I already said what I had to say. At the moment the appointment is Friday at the square. But… never say never.”