Elba combines literature and a contemporary outlook
2' min read
2' min read
The 53rd edition of the Isola d'Elba - Raffaello Brignetti International Literary Prize ended last Saturday (6 September 2025). The winners were Sandro Veronesi with the novel Settembre nero (La nave di Teseo, also declared super-winner), Vittorio Lingiardi with the essay Corpo, umano (Einaudi) and Sandra Petrignani with the novel Autobiografia dei miei cani (Feltrinelli).
The Prize, of which I have been president of the jury since 2024, was born in 1962, when a group of Tuscan literati led by Geno Pampaloni and Rodolfo Doni founded it with the intention of imagining the Island of Elba as a 'cultural utopia' capable of expressing great ideals through books and the experience of the sea. "The most important things in the world are achieved through culture," said Napoleon Bonaparte when he arrived on Elba in 1814, bringing with him 146 volumes personally chosen from the library of Fontainebleau, the founding nucleus of his book collection.
The list of winners was inaugurated by Alfonso Gatto with his book Charlemagne in the Cave, followed by, among others, Heinrich Böll (Opinioni di un clown, 1965) and Tommaso Landolfi (Racconti impossibili, 1966), Eugenio Montale (Fuori di casa, 1969) and Mircea Eliade (Nozze in cielo, 1984), Mario Tobino (Il Maniconio di Pechino, 1990), Mario Luzi (Simone Martini's Viaggio terrestre e celeste, 1994) and Fosco Maraini (Case, amori, universi, 2000), Muriel Spark (Invidia, 2005) and Benedetta Tobagi (Come mi batte forte il tuo cuore, 2010), Francesca Melandri (Più alto del mare, 2012) and Domenico Starnone (Scherzetto, 2017), Paolo Giordano (Tasmania, 2023) and Antonio Franchini (Il fuoco che ti porti dentro, 2024).
"Those paper boats that are books remain the most reliable vessels to face the seas of such a dramatically complex contemporary world, to reaffirm once again the responsibility of words and writing," said Ernesto Ferrero, winner of the Elba Prize in 2003 (with the essay Lezioni napoleoniche) and president of the jury until 2023. Ferrero was very attached to the Island of Elba, which he considered his chosen homeland, to which he dedicated his most famous novel, N. (2000, Premio Strega), a re-enactment of the three hundred days of Napoleon's exile and principality on the island (4 May 1814 - 26 February 1815) through the eyes and words of his librarian. For Giuseppe Pontiggia "one of the happiest novels" of the year two thousand.
The Prize is named after Raffaello Brignetti, who from his debut story Il grande mare (The Great Sea) created one of the most significant marine epics in our literature, culminating in the novels Il gabbiano azzurro (Premio Viareggio 1967) and La spiaggia d'oro (Premio Strega 1971), electing the sea as a metaphorical mirror of life's challenges. It is in the wake of this illustrious tradition (of which the Elban writer Oreste del Buono is also a part) that the Elba Prize proposes examples of literature that combine ethics and aesthetics in the best quality.
