Hamburg – Today, November 3, at 7 p.m., Italian writer Giulia Caminito will be a guest at the Italian Cultural Institute in Hamburg, where she will guide the audience through a journey into 20th-century women’s literature. Caminito will read passages from Amatissime, a book in which her personal memories intertwine with the biographies of six Italian women writers of the last century.
From childhood to posthumous legacy, the essays grapple with a central question: how does one keep a woman writer alive? How can her manuscripts be preserved, her life remembered, and her books continuously accessible?
The book opens with Elsa Morante. Through her writings on childhood, Caminito reconstructs the young Elsa—her places, early writings, fears, and complex personality, at once vain and melancholic. Paola Masino represents adolescence, the desire for rebellion, and the discovery of identity beyond the home. Maria Bellonci introduces the world of writing: her twenties, the passion for historical novels, and her mastery of the genre.
Natalia Ginzburg offers insight into the publishing world, particularly her long years at Einaudi. The final two writers, Laudomia Bonanni and Livia De Stefani, reveal the challenges and societal hurdles women writers faced in Rome. Though now little known, their lives and works testify to courage, imagination, and resilience.
At the end of this journey, what remains is Caminito’s deep affection for these writers, whom she considers part of her personal literary lineage—special relatives of the heart.