A Posthumous Victory of Ada D'Adamo at Premio Strega 2023

The author of the best Italian book of the year wasn't able to enjoy her triumph because she died just days after making it into the list of finalists. Ada D’Adamo's novel Come d’aria has won the 77th edition of the most prestigious Italian literary award - Premio Strega.

In her book D'Adamo recounts what it means to raise a child with special needs in Italy: loneliness, abandonment, frustration. Ada tells firsthand about her daughter's disability who cannot speak. It is a memoir, in which life becomes literature, and fiction is replaced by the truth of emotions, but it is at the same time a political novel of denunciation. "She has always used low tones, right now she is silent but what I know is that her words will go a long way", while accepting the prize her husband commented on the surprise victory of Come d'aria, as her book, before finding an editorial support, had received countless rejections.

It's not only the suffering of a daughter who cannot communicate and the guilt of a mother who are the constant throughout the novel, the book also tells of Ada's cancer and the interrupted closeness, because every disease breaks a balance. Come d'Aria is a novel that speaks above all of love and "short moments of happiness that flourish in the folds of the days."

Last year the Premio Strega was awarded to Mario Desiati's Spatriati.