Wanda Marasco won the 63rd edition of the Campiello Prize with From behind this world (Neri Pozza), a historical novel focused on the figure of Ferdinando Palasciano, on his courage, his beliefs, the madness and the relationship with his wife Olga, a noblewoman of Russian origin. The jury of the 300 readers thus decided to reward one of the only two works of true narrative present in this year – the other, Inverness by Monica Pareschi, he placed third, on the last step of the podium.

From behind this world It is a complex and structured novel, as they see few years in recent years, especially in the Italian literary panorama; Based on sources and historiographic research, it has a deeply narrative soul. Marasco tells the last years of life of Ferdinando Palasciano, a Neapolitan surgeon, politician and precursor of the Red Cross. Appointed doctor of the Army of the two Sicilies, he found himself in Messina during the insurrectional motions of 1848. Contrary to the provisions of General Carlo Filangieri, the then 33 -year -old Palasciano worked to give medical care also to the enemies who remained injured during the fighting and was accused of insubordination. Despite the timely historical reconstructions From behind this world It is a novel that speaks above all of love – that between the doctor and his wife Olga -, of loyalty, and still of mental illness, the one that caught Palasciano in the last years of life and that led him to delight and be internally.

A story of non -trivial, profoundly psychological suffering, from which the impact that a person’s inner world can have on the closest people, in the case in this case consort, friends and colleagues, transpires. It is, more generally, a novel that reflects on the solitude of those who, taking up the title of the novel, finds themselves “from behind in the world” because it is fed by a deep vocation. Marasco packs a work of narrative of the past, at times complex from a linguistic but still fully intellectual point of view. The only note: perhaps the style, sometimes, exceeds in baroque.

In a separate article (it can be found at this link), I deepened the finalist works of this year’s Campiello Prize and highlighted how much the choice of the jurors has devoted itself from the ‘spirit’ of the literary recognition promoted by the industrialists of the Veneto.