(by Michela Magnifico)
He spoke about the ability of reading to open people "to empathy for the suffering of others," about the characters in his books and his readers who "are democratic human beings." Israeli writer Eshkol Nevo, at yesterday evening's stop in Vieste as part of Il Libro Possibile festival, avoided answering journalists' questions about the controversy that accompanied his participation in the festival, and after enjoying a walk through the narrow streets of the Gargano town, he spoke about his book Nostalgia and his work in general.
"You cannot live in a country like mine," he said, "without being influenced by everything that happens around you, especially when everything that happens around you is everything that has been happening for the past three years. The last book I wrote in Hebrew, which will be translated and published in Italy starting in 2027, reflects precisely on this. On how conflict and war can impact each of our lives."
"There is no obstacle, no barrier between the internal and the external," he continued, "between the personal and what happens around us, but rather it is precisely a process of osmosis, a process of passage through this barrier that I try to pursue within my stories."
His participation in the festival had been opposed and preceded by an appeal signed by intellectuals, academics, politicians, and also by the Archbishop of Manfredonia, calling on the festival's organisers to withdraw the invitation to the writer, who had been challenged for his positions deemed not explicitly critical of the Israeli government. The appeal was reiterated again yesterday morning, just a few hours before the opening evening, at a press conference called in Bari by the signatories of the appeal.
"I believe that literature does exactly the opposite of creating a peace of the inner self," said Nevo. "In fact, literature and reading open people up to empathy, to the ability to feel the pain of others, of one's own enemy, or even simply a shared pain, because we are all human beings, and that is what I try to convey in my books, and I believe that all books do this." "From my books," he added, "a democratic human being emerges, because many of them tell stories from different perspectives. The same story can be told from the point of view of a man, a woman, an elderly man, a young person, a Palestinian, an Israeli. The angles are so many, and my stories, my characters, and in some way also my readers, are democratic human beings."
"Nostalgia," he further said, "certainly aims to explore the connection between what happens around us and the effect all of this has on our lives, on family relationships, on bonds, on how the chemical process of osmosis between external life and personal life is created."
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