Claudia Durastanti »Missitalia« & Carlo Levi »Christus kam nur bis Eboli«

‘We are not Christians,’ people say, ‘Christ only got as far as Eboli.’ These famous lines appear in Carlo Levi’s memoir of the same name, which offers the first portrait of the southern Italian region of Lucania: where the road and the railway tracks leave the Salerno coast and the sea behind and lead into nowhere. First published in 1945 and having since achieved worldwide fame, Levi established the genre of literary ethnography: he immerses himself in the life of deprivation endured by the peasants of the Mezzogiorno, getting to know their daily lives and worries as well as their magical customs and ancient traditions.

Martin Hallmannsecker has produced a new translation of this famous book, breathing new life into it. Together with presenter Deniz Utlu and the Italian-American author Claudia Durastanti, he will be focusing this evening on Lucania – today’s Basilicata – where Claudia Durastanti’s new novel »Missitalia« is also set.

Three extraordinary women across three centuries set the tone here: there is Amalia, who gathers orphans and runaways around her during the war. And then there is the young scientist Ada, who, a hundred years later, whilst the region is being explored for oil, becomes a spy by chance. In the future, it is A, another woman from Basilicata, who is tasked with preparing for life on the Moon.

Like Levi, yet in a very different way, Durastanti explores myth and history, the changes of the present and the future, and discusses these topics in English, German and Italian with Deniz Utlu and Martin Hallmannsecker.