Francesco Piccolo won the 68th
Strega book prize Thursday night with his bittersweet memoir of
life on the Italian Left, 'Il desiderio di essere come tutti'
(The Desire To Be Like Everyone), published by Einaudi.
Caserta-born novelist and screenwriter Piccolo, 50, won by
just five votes over Antonio Scurati with 'Il padre infedele'
(The Faithless Father), published by Bompiani.
It was the second near miss by Scurati who in 2009 lost to
Tiziano Scarpa by a single vote.
Last year's winner was Walter Siti with his seventh novel,
Resistere Non Serve A Niente (It's No Use Resisting).
In 2012 the prize went to Alessandro Piperno with
Inseparabili (Inseparable).
The Strega is perhaps the most high-brow of Italy's three
big book awards.
The others are the Viareggio and Campiello prizes.
Recent winners of the Strega have included Niccolo'
Ammanati, Maurizio Maggiani and Sandro Veronesi.
Of these, Ammanati is perhaps the best known abroad
because of his 2001 cult thriller Io non ho paura (I'm Not
Scared) which was turned into a 2003 film of the same name by
Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores.
The Einaudi publishing house was founded by Giulio
Einaudi, the son of Italy's first president, in 1933 and
published some of Italy's best-known authors.
It was also the first house to publish Boris Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago, in 1957, when the famous novel was banned in
the Soviet Union.
The Strega prize was founded in 1947 by author Maria
Bellonci (1902-1986).
Bellonci, best-known for her successful biographies of
historical figures like Marco Polo and Lucretia Borgia,
wanted to encourage literary freedom of expression after its
repression under Fascism.
The name Strega, which means witch in Italian, refers to
the prize's sponsors, producers of the famed yellow liqueur
of the same name.
Past winners include Cesare Pavese, Alberto Moravia,
Giorgio Bassani, Elsa Morante, Dino Buzzati, Giuseppe Tomasi
di Lampedusa, Carlo Cassola, Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi,
Umberto Eco and Gesualdo Bufalino.
In the past, the Strega prize has been marked by
controversy.
There have sometimes been rowdy arguments involving
publishers and writers and even allegations of vote rigging.
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