Bonvissuto wins the 2013 Chiara Prize

 Sandro Bonvissuto got 65 votes, with “Dentro”, Mario Vichi got 41 votes, with “Racconti Neri” (Black tales), and Mauro Corona, 40 votes, with “Venti racconti brevi e uno triste” (Twenty short tales and one sad one). This was the decision of the popular jury who proclaimed the winner of the 2013 Chiara Prize. Bonvissuto also won the Award of the Press. This victory was genuinely unexpected, and came as a surprise for the Roman writer; his tears of emotion demonstrated that even he was not expecting to win against two authors as well-known to the public as Mario Vichi and Mauro Corona. And in the interview with the three finalists, when Andrea Vitali asked what their plans for the future were, Sandro replied, “I’m going to write another novel for Einaudi, although it’s still in the early stages, given that “Dentro” has brought me an unexpected success that I hadn’t even allowed myself to hope for.”

Today, Sunday 27 October, not only the jury but also the audience of readers, who had gathered at the Sala Napoleonica in the Ville Ponti, were charmed by the words of the winner. Reading an extract from “Dentro”, he bewitched his audience; maybe it was the contents, or the way that he read his own lines, but he managed to hold the attention of the audience, who seemed to hang on his every word, who burst into thunderous applause, the natural conclusion of such a captivating moment.

“Dentro” does not sound like the first attempt by the author. Looking back, it recounts three cornerstone moments of a man’s life: prison, the friendship between two adolescents and the adventures of a small child learning to ride a bicycle with its father. The first character, used by the author to tell the tale, brings the reader straight to the places and among the people in the story. But, on his website, Bonvissuto wanted to point out that “Dentro” is not an autobiographical book, it does not talk about his life, but about life. And during the meeting today, he explained, “It’s a book written in a disorderly manner, where it’s not what is said that counts, but how it is said.”

Here is an extract from the winning novel. “After taking my details, and some photos, they also took my fingerprints. And there they were, on that piece of paper, on the table, right in front of me; they were like a revealed secret, something that, until a short time ago, had been intimate and personal, that from now on everyone could see. Without asking me anything.”

And who knows? You might also feel like going to the bookshop, buying the book and starting this story of many surprises.