Not a novel for everyone, it certainly stands out among the five finalists of the 2024 Campiello Prize for its stylistic figure. Place of Desperation by Michele Mari, chosen with a fair amount of conviction, last May 31, by the jury of literary figures headed by Walter Veltroni – he was included among the five in the second round of voting – in view of the 130 pages or so that compose it, one could mistakenly consider it an easy work to read: the quantity of Latinisms, words of various kinds, refined, obsolete, sometimes even incomprehensible (let’s face it!), require frequent consultation of a good dictionary of the Italian language. In short, a novel of 130 pages, but it is as if one were reading one of 200 or more.

A small cross drawn with chalk above the front door: the protagonist comes across it one morning, leaving the house. It is a mysterious symbol that he cannot understand; he tries to erase it, thinking it is a joke, but the next day it reappears, and so on in the following days. He receives a first response from some strange figures who seem to have lived more than one life, who propose an exchange: someone will take his place in his home, he will have to move to another apartment and change his identity at the same time. All his beloved objects, endowed with a soul, will have to decide whether to follow him or become faithful to the new owner of the house (staining themselves with betrayal).

Michele Mari, with his work, digs into the bond that each person has with their own past, to the point of being jealous of it to the point of being strenuously jealous. And the past, given the material inconsistency of memories, is witnessed by objects. This is exactly how the novel by the Milanese writer begins, with a long list of objects (but the reader will come across many others during the course of this long story): “Four original tables of the Necron of Magnus, two of the Dick Tracy by Chester Gould, two of the Little Abner by Al Capp, a Cocco Bill dedicated to me by Jacovitti (…) the first edition of theOrtiz Foscolo’s, that of the Orphic songs by Dino Campana (…) I contemplated some other beauties, lingering my gaze as if to subsume them in the greedy entrails (…). They are books of a certain prestige, refined works, but the protagonist struggles to find the courage to part with even apparently insignificant objects, but with great sentimental value.

In Place of Desperation there is a writing similar to Gadda and therefore very difficult in itself, constant references to modern classical literature, intuitions typical of the best José Saramago, encroachments on the double – a theme so dear, since always, to literature – and a more or less clear homage to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Between the protagonist’s apartment and his house in the countryside, transfigured creatures, capital sins and ‘contrapassi’, the references seem to be widespread and rather clear. An example among many is Silenus, ‘man of the sludge’, “something human, like a tarred abortion, about the size of an adult Labrador”, guardian of the house in the countryside. A strange being who has assumed, in part, that strange composition after having swallowed an entire can of black paint. A contrapasso caused by his gluttony, one might think. The reference to Cerberus from the Divine Comedy is immediate: a dog with three heads (Silenus appears, in his own way, like a dog), guardian (like Silenus) of the third circle of Hell, coincidentally the one occupied by gluttons.

With a surreal and intricate tale, rich in magical and esoteric elements, inhabited by objects and books that come to life to interface with the person to whom they belong, Michele Mari manages to give shape, in some way, to the worst nightmares of compulsive readers and collectors, and opens up a reflection: do we own books and objects, or do they own us?