by Isabella Weber

Noir in Festival celebrates the 25th edition of the Giorgio Scerbanenco Award, which has been singling out the best Italian novel out of all the mystery novels published each year since 1993. This coveted award, which has crowned authors such as Carlo Lucarelli, Giancarlo De Cataldo, Maurizio De Giovanni and Gianrico Carofiglio in the past, has been bestowed this year on Lissy, the second novel by Luca D’Andrea, published by Einaudi.

In keeping with tradition, the five finalists joined forces to meet their readers for a talk arranged for the occasion at the Fondazione Feltrinelli in Milan, on December 4. The moderator this year was Valerio Calzolaio, a member of Noir’s literary jury, who enlightened the audience as to the criteria that guided the jury in selecting Lissy from the five-book shortlist, the other titles being Del dirsi addio by Marcello Fois, Un piede in due scarpe by Bruno Morchio, È stato breve il nostro lungo viaggio by Elena Mearini, and the winner of the Readers’ Award, L’uomo di casa by Romano De Marco. "Just like all juries," Calzolaio explained, "in ours, too, the human factor played a key role: after considering the criteria carefully, each of us is guided by his or her own personal tastes. And personally, I lean towards emerging authors."

How did these writers wind up in the mystery section of the bookshop?
"I’ve always been delighted to be called a noir writer," says a proud Fois. "I think it’s a great honor to be placed in the same category as authors such as Gadda, Sciascia, and, naturally, Scerbanenco. As to the last on that list, many Italian writers today are in his debt. Scerbanenco was the first to give genre novels the literary status they deserved."

What was the impetus for these novels?
"I was looking for a challenge that would force me to become a more innovative writer," said De Romano. "This is why I swapped my previous novels’ settings in Milan for Virginia, a state I know well, with a quality of life and a neighborly ethos that fascinate me, and went into my novel. I wanted to show the contrast between a quiet life, on the surface, and the horror lurking beneath."
The theme of the disconnect between an apparent perfection and a profound malevolence re-emerges in the protagonist of Mearini’s novel as well: "It’s precisely when he discovers and accepts his own dark side that Cesare rediscovers his truest self."
By contrast, D’Andrea took pacing and setting as his points of departure. "I wanted to write a book set in my bucolic Alpine Alto Adige, but with the pace of a classic hardboiled detective novel. Lissy was the result."

The conversation with the Scerbanenco Award finalists was just the first of a series of Conversations in Noir that will continue for the duration of the festival, in Milan and Como.