After «The memory that if it has» (2017) Mariza D’Anna returns with a novel, an ideal sequel to the first, entitled “The house of Shara Band Ong – Tripoli”, (Màrgana edizioni).
In the book, the author, a journalist from La Sicilia, traces the childhood of little Tea who, with her parents, teachers in the Italian high school and her brother Aldino, lives on the fourth floor of the building located in Shara Band Ong at number 56. The bond with that land, which has become their homeland, is ancient. Francesco, Tea’s great-grandfather had been the owner of a farm 100 kilometers from the capital, purchased in the second half of the 1920s when Fascist Italy launched the idea of the Fourth Bank to be colonized to give work to Italians beyond the sea.
In Tripoli, in that four-storey rationalist-style building, between the Cathedral and the royal palace, live families of different origins and provenance: Arabs, Jews, Italians, English, Maltese. A multi-ethnic koiné that lives in carefree harmony. The children, having finished their homework, play in the square courtyard, exchange visits and go together to the souk to buy small sweet pastries.
In the narration, in which loves, friendships, joys and misfortunes are intertwined, not everything is a faithful memory of reality however, by recounting the years that pass, the author reconstructs her private legend, common to many children born in the former colony. The harmony of the Italian family, full of hopes and expectations, is shattered with the seizure of power by Colonel Gaddafi who, in October 1970, expelled the twenty thousand Italians who live there from Libya, making them refugees from a country in which they will return more.
From the novel a musical theater show was drawn with the libretto by Mariza D’Anna and the playwright Guido Barbieri, original music by Carla Magnan and Carla Rebora, Biondi-Bruniali piano duo, directed by Maria Paola Viano, which will be staged , as soon as the theaters reopen, in Trapani for the Associazione degli Amici della Musica, in Genoa, Como, Livorno and other theaters in northern Italy.
BiographyMariza D’Anna lived in Tripoli until the age of nine. She moved with her family to Rome and then to Genoa where she graduated and practiced the profession of lawyer and teacher of legal and economic disciplines. Professional journalist since 1995, he collaborated with Rai and other national newspapers to land at the newspaper “La Sicilia” where he still works. He has published the novel Specchi (Edizioni Nulla Die, 2015), Il memoria che se ne ne – Biar Miggi (Màrgana edizioni, 2017) and with the same publishing house a short story in Trapanese Polyphony (2018). |