Now in its 26th year, the 2016 Noir in Festival, the first to take place in Lombardy on December 8-14, reinvents itself in its new location by bestowing its most prestigious literary prize, the Raymond Chandler Award for Lifetime Achievement, on an Italian writer who, young as he is, has already left his mark on Italian literature and Italy’s cultural scene over the past decade, his powerful writings garnering admirers around the world: Roberto Saviano.
Ten years after his international bestseller Gomorrah, Saviano once again examines the violence of his native region, specifically teen gangs, in La paranza dei bambini, his latest non-fiction novel published by Feltrinelli and released on November 10th. It’s further proof that Saviano is not just a good writer, but an author "with a political vision of writing itself," as he himself declared in a recent interview. "I keep wondering if words can change the world," he said. "This is why I wrote La paranza dei bambini."
In the best tradition of the Chandler Award, the winning author is a storyteller recounting reality and a creator of emotions, a visionary who firmly hopes to eradicate evil by describing it. Who better than Roberto Saviano could ever embody this hope today? We are delighted and extremely proud to be bestowing on Saviano the literary award we hold most dear.
Instituted by Irene Bignardi in 1996, thanks to a collaboration with the Raymond Chandler Estate, the Raymond Chandler Award has gone to the world’s leading writers in this literary genre, including P.D. James, John le Carré, John Grisham, Elmore Leonard, Scott Turow, Michael Connelly, Andrea Camilleri, Don Winslow, Henning Mankell, and many more, right up to last year’s choice, the 2015 winner Joe Lansdale.
