The Premio Strega 2024 Handed To Donatella Di Pietrantoni's L'età Fragile

The 78th edition of the Premio Strega - the most prestigious annual literary award in Italy - has announced this year's winner. Donatella Di Pietrantoni's L’età fragile (The Fragile Age) has won with 189 votes. It also was voted as the winner of the Premio Strega Giovani.

L'età fragile is the novel of a mother who cannot find respite, caught between the severity of her father and the silence of her daughter. A book that cures pain by telling it, because it is written by a woman who knows the miracle of words and the blood of wounds (Vittorio Lingiardi).

Amanda barely catches one of the last trains and returns home, to that town near Pescara from which she had run away. One look is enough for her mother to understand that something in her has gone out: in the early days in Milan she had the lights of the city in her eyes, now she seems to just want to disappear, she locks herself in her room and almost doesn't speak. Lucia would like to keep her safe from everything, even at the cost of suffocating her, but there is a secret that she cannot hide from her. Under the Wolf's Tooth, on the land that belongs to their family, you can still see the remains of a campsite where a terrible event happened many years ago. Sometimes time decides to go back: under that mountain that Lucia has always tried to forget, among the pastures and woods of her fragile age, all the threads are stretched. Caught between the old father who is so rooted into the earth and her daughter who is more stubborn than him, Lucia understands that there is a force that passes through her.

L’età fragile has collected 92% of total votes, leaving behind the other shortlisted finalists: Dario Voltolini's, Invernale, 143 votes; Chiara Valerio's, Chi dice e chi tace, 138 votes; Raffaella Romagnolo's, Aggiustare l’universo, 83 votes; Paolo Di Paolo's, Romanzo senza umani, 66 votes and Tommaso Giartosio's, Autobiogrammatica, 25 votes.