Presentation of the English edition of the international bestseller and winner of the Premio Strega The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi translated by Elena Pala, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 24 June 2021.
The Author will be in conversation with Elena Pala, Giorgia Tolfo. Chaired by Katia Pizzi.
The Hummingbird has been a perennial bestseller in Italy since its original publication in October 2019 (selling over 300,000 copies to date). Voted ‘Best Book of the Year’ by the Corriere della Sera it went on to win the Premio Strega, the Italian equivalent of the Booker Prize. Veronesi is only the second author in the seventy-three year history of the Prize to have won the award twice.
Ever since his childhood, Marco Carrera, who suffered from a growth disorder as a boy, has been called ‘the hummingbird’.
But in a sense Marco really is a hummingbird: a man with an almost supernatural ability to stay still as the world around him continues to change. He lives a dramatic life, full of joy, love, hope, laughter and heartbreak, but still manages to remain in perfect balance. His frantic movements enable him to survive the existential acrobatics of life – just like a hummingbird, which makes twelve to eighty wing beats per second, but remains suspended in the air, seemingly motionless.
As he navigates the challenges of life – confronting the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; taking care of his parents as they approach the end of their lives; raising his granddaughter when her mother, Marco’s own child, can no longer be there for her; coming to terms with his love for the enigmatic Luisa – Marco Carrera comes to represent the quiet heroism that pervades so much of our everyday existence.
Sandro Veronesi was born in Florence in 1959. He holds a degree in architecture, has five children and lives in Rome. He is the author of nine novels including Quiet Chaos (2005), which was translated into twenty languages and won the Premio Strega, the Prix Fémina and the Prix Méditerranée. Quiet Chaos was made into a film with Nanni Moretti and Isabella Ferrari which was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin Festival. Sandro Veronesi’s latest novel, The Hummingbird has been a perennial bestseller in Italy since its original publication in October 2019 (selling over 300,000 copies to date). Voted ‘Best Book of the Year’ by the Corriere della Sera it went on to win the Premio Strega, the Italian equivalent of the Booker Prize. Veronesi is only the second author in the seventy-three year history of the Prize to have won the award twice. Film rights have been optioned.
Elena Pala translates from Italian and French. After completing her PhD in Linguistics at Cambridge University, Elena worked for an advertising agency in London and backpacked across the length and breadth of South America before returning to the UK to fulfil her dream of translating books for a living. Recent translations include The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi and Down & Out in England and Italy by Alberto Prunetti.
Giorgia Tolfo is a cultural activist. She holds a PhD in Comparative and Postcolonial Literature (University of Bologna) and an MA in Digital Humanities (UCL, London). She has co-founded and co-directs FILL, the Festival of Italian Literature in London, and works as a literary critic and translator with a particular interest in minority voices. Currently, she is part of the Living with Machines project at the British Library/The Alan Turing Institute.
Please join us through this link
Password: Gmnp3ygsx65
Praise for The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi