The Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal is pleased to invite you to the meeting with the Italian-Canadian writer, Nino Famà, on the occasion of the launch of his book “Il sogno di Toloma“. Introduction Prof. Francesco D’Arelli, the evening will be hosted by Prof. Francesco Loriggio.
April 11, 2018, 6pm Free Admission
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montreal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
Conference in Italian
This is the story of Nicky, a university student and a third generation Italian-Canadian. The divorce of his parents in his adolescent years and the resulting lack of family affection have left him with a precarious sense of identity, which, together with his distaste for the callous, consumer-driven society he lives in, fosters doubts and anxieties that lead to neurosis. At the end of the novel he visits the land of his ancestors to connect with his own roots and find a way to deal with his existential illness. The life of the young man is interwoven with that of his grandfather in a fluid lifelike narrative in which the vicissitudes of the modern world alternate with those of a world that is ancient and primordial. Nicky’s transcription of his grandfather’s diary after the old man’s death brings into the narrative the story of five generations of his ancestors, the Nicoterras, as they worked, fought, suffered, and hoped.
We soon become aware that good intentions and strength of will are often not enough. One always has to deal with destiny, the eternal adversary, which leads these human beings toward unforeseen and unimagined ends. If on the one hand the novel narrates the saga of the Nicoterra’s family, whose characters, for five generations lug along the backstreets of history and walk through the insidious traps of destiny; on the other, the story is concentrated on Nicky’s inner self and his struggle with neurosis, which triggers the problem of his roots and his identity, which cannot by themselves resolve the young man’s mental disorder, which is the reflection of the more general existential chaos of the postmodern society.
Born in Barcellona P.G. (ME, Italy), Nino Famà is currently professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. He has taught Latin American literature at the University of Victoria, British Columbia (1976-1984) and then at the University of Waterloo in Ontario (1984-2008). He has published two books of literary criticism: Realismo mágico en la narrativa de Demetrio Aguilera Malta (Madrid, 1976) and Las últmas obras de Alejo Carpentier (Caracas, 1995). He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and essays, which have been published in scholarly journals in Canada, Europe, USA and Latin America. More recently, he has cultivated his passion to writing works of fiction in Italian. His latest novel, Il sogno di Toloma e L’oceano nel pozzo (2014), were published by Pellegrini Editore. La stanza segreta (2004), was published by Sciascia Editore and was later translated in English by Douglas Campbell and Leonard Sbrocchi and published by LEGAS Publishing in 2008 with the title The secret room. A collection of short stories, Don Gaudenzio e altre storie, was published by Bastogi Editrice Italiana in 1996.
Originaire de Vibo Valentia, Francesco Loriggio est professeur émérite à l’Université Carleton (Ottawa), où il a enseigné dans les départements d’Études italiennes et de Littérature comparée et au sein du College of the Humanities. Il a été président de la Société canadienne pour les études italiennes de 1999 à 2002 et, de 1994 à 2000, directeur de la Research Unit on Southern European Literature and Culture. Ses nombreux articles portent entre autres sur la théorie de la littérature et sur le rapport entre la littérature et les sciences sociales; il s’est de plus intéressé à des écrivains comme Verga, Pirandello, Quasimodo, Alvaro et Pasolini, ainsi qu’à des auteurs italo-canadiens et italo-américains. Il a traduit en anglais quelques pièces en un acte d’Achille Campanile et édité divers volumes d’essais, dont Social Pluralism and Literary History: The Literature of the Italian Emigration (1996) et The Last Effort of Dreams: Essays on the Poetry of Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (2007). A filo doppio, une anthologie d’écrivains calabro-canadiens réalisée en collaboration avec Vito Teti, de l’Université de la Calabre, a paru chez Donzelli Editore, en Italie, au printemps de 2017.
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