Diego Zandel
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Biographical notes
Born on April 5, 1948 in the refugee camp of Servigliano, in the province of Fermo (Marche) to parents from Rijeka, when he was three months old he arrived at the Giuliano Village in Rome, together with two thousand other refugees from Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia.
These origins, together with having married a woman of Greek mother, from the island of Kos, will influence much of his literary work. The Giuliano Village and its community appear in his first novel "Massacre for a President" published by Mondadori in 1981, which was the first to address the problem of red terrorism in Italy. Until then, Zandel had published the collections of poems: "Primi Giorni", published by O.E.L. in Rome, "Ore ferme", published by SAL in Trieste, and the essay "Invito alla lettura" by Andrić, published by Mursia. The novel "An Istrian Story" of 1987, published by Rusconi, was a finalist for the Naples Prize that year.
He was a manager of Telecom Italia, responsible for publishing activities. Previously, he was an editorial consultant for the publishing houses Mondadori, Bompiani and Rusconi. He is currently senior editor of Oltre Edizioni, for which he edits the Italian and foreign fiction series, and non-fiction "Readings of the world", and Editorial Director of M.E.A. Phoenix, a company that offers publishing services to publishing houses.
Critical notes
Zandel's first novel "Massacre for a President" is apparently on the model of a thriller in recording the maneuvers of some terrorist groups but, unlike serial novels, it does not celebrate the triumph of justice or hand over the guilty to the public prosecution. The story is also intertwined with an external story that revolves around the figure of Raul Radossi, alter ego of the author as well as the narrator, in which the intimate reasons for a life choice that were born in the country of origin of Zandel's grandparents, Fiume, predominate.
The real theme of the novel is in fact Raul's search for his own identity, an attempt to understand what is the relationship that binds him on the one hand with the world of Istrian exiles and on the other to the variegated world of the city in which he lives, Rome, but in which he does not have his biological-affective roots. What emerges from this condition is the impossibility of nourishing nostalgia for a land that he has not lived in but which is that of his people, combined with the inability to feel at ease in a city that he does not feel his own.
"An Istrian Story", published in 1987, tells the story of Ive Miculian, a generous miner, but even in this case, however, the novels seem to be two, and this time the theme is not the search for one's origin, or identity, but that of one's descent, or the future.
The novel "The Borders of Hate" (2002) also plays on the author's origins, telling a story set between Rijeka and the Balkans at the end of the interethnic war of 1991-1995 in the former Yugoslavia. A son, Bruno Lednaz, the writer's alter ego, accompanies the body of his father, who had asked to be buried in Rijeka, his hometown, then Italian, now Croatian, at the time when a few months ago the peace agreement was signed in Dayton, in the United States, which sanctions peace and the division of the territories of the former Yugoslavia between Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Bosnian Serbs.
However, at the borders, the hatred triggered by the war is still alive. Bruno realizes this when, while waiting for a place at the cemetery for his father, he decides to accompany a relative to Lika, a region of Croatia. From this moment on, an odyssey began for him that would be, at the same time, a denunciation of the evils that accompany every war and a condemnation of war itself. In 2011 another novel of denunciation was published that focuses specifically on the theme of the foibe and the exodus, "The Mute Witnesses", in which personal memories and history intertwine on the thread of a personal memory that turns into collective history.
The narrative voice is that of a child born in a refugee camp, raised in extreme poverty surrounded by the painful silence of adults. The encounter with a man, a mute witness of the tragedy, leads him towards a new awareness of his roots and his history.
Zandel also focused on more didactic works, such as "Apology of reading" of 2020, in which the author focuses on all his experience as a writer, passionate reader, reviewer of books, reader of texts that authors send to publishing houses with the hope of being published, with the aim of sharing with all lovers of books and reading a path that prevents surrender in the face of the thousand obstacles that in everyday life they stand between the desire to read and the time to do so.
Critical notes inspired by "Le "ore ferme": il rapporto tra storia e identità nella letteratura di Diego Zandel", by Cristina Benussi in "La Battana" n. 97-98, 1990.
Bibliography
- Massacre for a President (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1981)
- Una storia istriana (Rusconi, 1987)
- Blood Cruise (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1993), Segretissimo n. 1239
- Operazione Venere (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1996), Segretissimo n. 1306
- The Boundaries of Hate (Aragno, 2002)
- The Man from Kos (Hobby&Work, 2004)
- Eastwards. Tales of beyond the eastern border and the Aegean. With memories of the Julian-Dalmatian village in Rome (Campanotto, 2006)
- "The Lost Son" (Alacran, 2010)
- "The Greek Brother" (Hacca, 2010)
- "The Mute Witnesses" (Mursia, 2011)
- "Being Bob Lang" (Hacca, 2012)
- "The Romanian Consul", short stories (Oltre Edizioni, 2013)
- "Sentimental Manual of the Island of Kos" (Oltre Edizioni, 2016)
- "Balkanica - Journey into Southeast Europe through contemporary literature" (Edizioni Novecento Libri, 2018)
- "Apology of reading - Reflections of an inveterate bibliophile" (Historica, 2020)
- "Dangerous Cruise" (Oltre Edizioni, 2020)
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