"I am not narrating the nostalgia for an era, but for an illusion." This is what Laura Morante said at Pordenonelegge, presenting the national premiere of "Dieci storie pop" (La nave di Teseo), a collection of short stories set in 1960s Rome.
"Beneath the appearance of the economic boom lay the horrors that would emerge just a few years later: property speculation, the suffering of the South, poverty, political tensions," she explained. "Across the ten stories, a crescendo of small melancholies can be felt, a sense that the illusion is crumbling."
Morante chose Centocelle as the setting due to a paradox: "In a working-class neighbourhood it was harder to preserve the illusion, because the problems were experienced firsthand, yet at the same time it was also easier to delude oneself because people were less informed about the world."
The book is "a hybrid between a short story collection and a novel, with shared characters and a common narrator." Music is one of the central elements: "Pop songs become imbued with our memories, our experiences, our emotions," the author said. "Mozart remains himself, it is he who triumphs. Popular songs, on the other hand, become saturated with what we have lived through."
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