'Reading is a political act'

Fabio Stassi is an old acquaintance of the Campiello Prize; in 2013 he won the Selezione Camipello prize with L'ultimo ballo di Charlot, a book that has been translated into nineteen languages. He is now in the finals with Bebelplatz. La notte dei libri bruciati (Sellerio, pp., 290, euro 16)

Could you describe this book?

Bebelplatz is for me a platypus book: a novel without fiction, a travel report on the Europe of yesterday and today, an existential as well as historical investigation, a narrative essay, a collection of literary biographies, a reader's notebook. Bebelplatz is the square in Berlin where thousands of books were burned by the Nazis, but it is also a symbolic place. It is renewed every time a book is censored or burned, every time the voice of a poet or a human being is silenced.

Why did you feel the need to tell this story?

Because during the pandemic and in recent years, many things have been on fire: for me, certain affections, a certain idea of literature, a certain idea of reality. Above all, on this side of the planet, the word peace was on fire and the world went off its hinges. I could no longer write in the same ink as before. I thus had the need to question the fires of the past and the very meaning of writing and reading. Because reading is a right that must be defended: even if we do not realise it, it is not a right guaranteed everywhere. Reading is a political act, it is a responsibility, a taking a stand. It is the readers who are dangerous, because they think for themselves. With Bebelplatz I wanted to write this, after all, a eulogy of reading that no power can ever subdue.