Parigi è un desiderio

A life story in constant tension towards the achievement of one of the great myths of the 20th century, relived through the romantic journey of a modern forty-year-old Italian man.

Winner of “The Bridge” Prize: English Translation costs are entirely covered

Full English translation and French synopsis available

Born and bread in Milan, the narrator as an adolescent has already developed the awareness of belonging to another place, an elected homeland where he can achieve his literary ambitions; this place is Paris. And the Ville Lumière, with its penniless artists and young bohemians in search of their place in the world, is exactly as he had imagined it: if anything it is in fact better, because it becomes the nest of all his love stories, from the ones as a young man, squeezed within tiny crowded studios in the most remote arrondissement, to the more mature ones, until he finally meets Hélène with whom he decides to share his future and who will give him a daughter. These episodes from his life in Paris and the women he meets there are the starting point for a reflection on the complexity of relationships and other wider existential themes. The narrator’s tone is always slightly disillusioned and the events are described with an ironic and irreverent style.