Dear Pier Paolo
Original title: Caro Pier Paolo
Synopsis
“These fascinating and precious pages are a declaration of love by Dacia Maraini to one of her dearest friends. Dacia and Pier Paolo are two human beings, two friends who trust each other, protect each other, walk on the winding road of life together.” — Emanuele Trevi, Corriere della sera’s La Lettura
“”Caro Pier Paolo” is a journey. A luminous book made out of dialogues and cultural exchanges, of comparison and attention, written in a perfect way: with that unique clarity of narration that only Dacia Maraini has. She manages to illuminate, perhaps for the first time, a controversial, complex and in a way tragic man like Pasolini. I can say that Pasolini, told by Dacia, has that lightness, that poetry of life and truth, that only she could have depicted.” — Corriere del Ticino
“Maraini and Pasolini, two writers, two intellectuals, but also two friends. And like all stories of friendship, even the one between Dacia and Pier Paolo is not based only on cultural harmony, but also on a life lived together: habits, dinners, travels, anecdotes. There is a bit of all this in «Caro Pier Paolo»”— La Stampa
“”Caro Pier Paolo” is a special book. And not just another book on Pier Paolo Pasolini, but a series of letters that the author sends to her murdered friend. The value of the book lies precisely in the collection of images of Pasolini that only Maraini has. Even when they are out of focus, blurred, they hit the mark more than many words spend on this genius. Their simplicity, their intensity, the completely personal way in which they are synchronized together, makes them unique rebuses, enigmatic only for those who do not know how to decipher them.” — Il Giornale
“Maraini has written a very intense book, structured in chapters which are as many letters addressed to Pasolini, a figure who, after so many years (almost half a century after his death), is more present than ever. The volume is a chain of memories, facts, anecdotes related to her friendship with Pasolini, and is capable of depicting a human portrait that stands out with great clarity.” — Il Messaggero Veneto
“The pages of this book have the guise of letters that were never sent, letters addressed to the friend, the director, the intellectual, the poet, the man who no longer has a body, but whose voice echoes year after year in the cultural panorama.” — Libero
“There are so many shadows that still lurk over the figure of Pasolini, but Dacia Maraini, with “Caro Pier Paolo”, is leaving us a portrait full of intimacy and discretion and the story of a lived friendship” like “a lunar grace”, with “the pleasure of being together without a purpose […]. At that time we sought each other for the pure pleasure of being together “(p. 185).” — Il Libraio
“It is certainly the most intimate book, filled with affection that makes every contradiction very deep.” — Elle
Dacia Maraini, an icon of the Italian contemporary literature, a superb writer, a sharp intellectual who helped to raise women’s emancipation with her constant dedication and engagement.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, an extraordinary intellectual, novelist, poet and movie director, brutally murdered on the night of November 2nd, 1975 in suspicious circumstances. Dacia Maraini and Pier Paolo Pasolini shared an important, intense life path. Their heartfelt intellectual friendship flourished through a vivid dialogue between two brilliant minds, left unbroken even by Pasolini’s death and kept alive in Caro Pier Paolo.
Maraini, her life companion, Alberto Moravia, and the entire world felt deeply wounded by Pasolini’s untimely demise, a pain made even stronger by the mysteries linked to that death. Dacia recalls the years spent with Pier Paolo, the shared fervent enthusiasm during the golden cultural era. So a stream of memories flows in a unique book, which only Dacia Maraini could have written, a precious witness of a time that she lived as a protagonist. With a graceful and elegant style, interwoven with rational and spontaneous reflections, Dacia Maraini blends past, present and future perfectly together. She weaves a poignant, strong and fascinating book on Pier Paolo Pasolini and on herself, a book that was still missing in the literary panorama.
Caro Pier Paolo is an intimate confession and the clearest and most accurate portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini ever written, a real gift to the readers, a declaration of love: the story of a great friendship between two writers, two giants who have marked our time.
Marketing Information
- Initial print run: 30,000 copies
- #4 of the Best-selling Charts in its first week of release