Memoir

Ma tu chi sei

(And Who Are You?)

Ugo Guanda Editore, February 2023, pp.224

A private story. A tight, thrilling novel that is not without subtle and resigned irony, about a son, a mother over ninety and a disease that ravages the memories that bring together many of the modern demons that torment us, and the attempts to defeat them.

Bruno Arpaia writes about himself: dealing with advancing age, with an ever-shrinking future, and his mother’s Alzheimer’s. It is a moving story of the disease, from the early symptoms to the relocation to an old people’s home, to the loss of the past. But it is also a touching reflection on disorientation at the time of Covid and war, on identity and the fear of death.

Ugo Guanda Editore, February 2023, pp.224

  • “Arpaia is one of those people who take on art and literature with the sole purpose of being consistent with life and the times in which he’s had to live.”

    Luis Sepúlveda

Bruno Arpaia

Bruno Arpaia was born in Ottaviano (Naples) in 1957. He is a journalist, essayist and novelist, and has translated the works of Spanish and Latin-American writers such as José Ortega y Gasset, Gabriel García Márquez and Javier Cercas. All his books are published by Guanda: among them are the novels L’Angelo della Storia/The Angel of History (2001) translated into 8 languages, Il passato davanti a noi/The Past ahead of us (2006), L’energia del vuoto/The Vacuum Energy (2011), Raccontare, resistere/To Tell, to Resist, a conversation with Luis Sepúlveda, the essay L’avventura di scrivere romanzi/The Adventure of Writing Novels with Javier Cercas, the noir Prima della battaglia/Before the Battle (2015), Qualcosa là fuori/ Something, Out There (2018), Il fantasma dei fatti/The Fact Ghost (2020).

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