Presentation of the book Città irreale by Cristina Marconi
The author will be present in conversation with Enrico Franceschini, journalist of “La Repubblica” and Marco Delogu, Director of the Institute.
Città irreale is a novel about the city that has become a magnet for all souls: London. It is set in 2007, when the economic crisis was still unheard, and Brexit an unimaginable possibility. An Italian girl in her twenties, Alina, moves to London, a city where she thinks possibilities are endless and doors always open. Here she will find an uninteresting job while trying to break through the English society. She will also meet the intriguing doctor Iain, whose previous life in Italy left permanent traces in him, bringing Alina to face once again the relationship with her motherland. Marconi’s tale is one of ambition, of discovery and of the danger of remaining stuck between two worlds.
Cristina Marconi is a freelance journalist and writer. Based in London since 2011, she covers politics, culture, economics for a range of publications, including Italian newspapers “Il Messaggero” and “Il Foglio”. She previously reported on European Institutions in Brussels, and lived in Paris. She wrote a book on journalism and the EU after undertaking a fellowship at Oxford University. She has a graduate degree in Philosophy from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Unreal City is her first novel.
Enrico Franceschini is the London correspondent of the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”, for which he previously worked in New York, Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem. For his coverage of post-Soviet Russia he won the Europe Prize for Journalism in 1994. He is the author of a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction, including Voglio l’America (2009), Londra Babilonia (2011) and Scoop (2017).