Sull’Accabadora (Italian Book Club)

12 meetings in a private home in the Upper East Side, discussing the book Accabadora by Michela Murgia. IN ITALIAN at an intermediate level (B1/C1). Three dinners will be offered from the host.
Intimate space, limited seats. The preview read of the book is not mandatory.

On the Book

This is a story that crosses coming-of-age novel, genre novel and a discourse on merciful and loving death, very relevant nowadays. It does so with a rough, ironic, poetic and refined writing, that of a Michela Murgia whom we find hard to forget and who we miss because of that. Who is the Accabadora? How does this ancient Sardinian practice between birth, death and rebirth relate to the special soul-daughter relationship (“Fillus de Anima”) between little Maria and ancient Tzia Bonaria? Who establishes true, natural motherhood and fatherhood in our existence? The setting is 1950s Sardinia, with unshakable and silent rules where people still believe in the àrgie (very poisonous spiders) and women of all generations who dance to resurrect you from the bite of the àrgia. Murgia uses all the force of literature to address such a complex issue without simplifying it and to question the concept of family and its ethics. On the other hand, "there is no living person who reaches his day without having had fathers and mothers at every street corner."