Italy's Premio Strega – the rough equivalent of the National Book Award – is approaching its eightieth edition. Following the semifinal held in Benevento, a historic city in southern Italy, the six finalists have been announced ahead of the July 8th ceremony at Rome's Campidoglio. Leading the field is Michele Mari, a seventy-year-old Milanese writer long admired by critics but rarely in the spotlight. His novel I convitati di pietra (Einaudi) received 280 votes, dominating the competition with a darkly comic premise: former high school classmates place a wager on their own deaths. Visibly shaken by the attention, Mari told the audience: "I truly don't know what to say. I feel swept up by events – I'm not used to being in the spotlight, to all this media attention. I need time to take it in." He then defended the book's bleak sensibility: "The cynicism of the novel is a luxury I allowed myself." Thirty-eight votes behind, Matteo Nucci's Platone. Una storia d'amore (Feltrinelli) sits in second place with 242 votes. The novel follows the life of the ancient Greek philosopher from youth to adulthood, tracing his private passions alongside his civic ideals – an ambitious four-hundred-page undertaking that few expected to place this high. Third is Bianca Pitzorno with La sonnambula (Bompiani, 195 votes) – one of Italy's most beloved authors, who was unable to attend for health reasons – followed by Teresa Ciabatti's Donnaregina (Mondadori, 184 votes), in which a journalist interviewing a mob boss gradually uncovers his vulnerabilities and humanity. Fifth is Alcide Pierantozzi with Lo sbilico (Einaudi, 170 votes), a novel about mental illness with a strongly autobiographical urgency. Rounding out the six is Elena Rui with Vedove di Camus (L'orma, 163 votes), reinstated to ensure the presence of an independent publisher – a requirement of the prize's rules. Her book revisits the figure of Albert Camus, the French-Algerian writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, through the eyes of four women who loved him.