Stradario aggiornato di tutti i miei baci

All forms of love.

A woman in constant dialogue with herself and the world draws a map of her obsessions, and of her relationship with love and her body – a reservoir of hypochondria and neuroses.

Daniela Ranieri’s new novel is a self-aware, hyper-realistic diary where every detail, every throb of her inner life is handled both as a scientific datum and as a wound of the soul. From the Covid-19 pandemic to everyday life in Rome, everything becomes part of a humorous, turbulent narrative, especially relationships: the many facets of Eros – meeting, flirtation, pleasure, mismatched cohabitation, violence, idealisation, dependency and pure love – are turned inside out in the author’s unique style, a blend of suffering, resentment and humour kneaded with great European literature (and not only that). Perhaps the true protagonist of Stradario aggiornato di tutti i miei baci is actually Daniela Ranieri’s language, a language rich in echoes of Gadda, of Thomas Bernhard-style annoyance, quotations, and at the same time one that’s eerily direct and unprecedented; a language whose ability to name and get close to things is equal only to its power to destroy them. Daniela Ranieri’s Stradario is not just a novel: it has the substance of a living body that inhabits the world, of a voice that captivates and persuades with the power of great literature.