Francesco Piccolo
Il desiderio di essere come tutti (Wanna Be Like Everyone)
A novel, Einaudi, October 2013, 272 pages

Winner of the Premio Strega 2014
Winner of the Premio Padula 2014

“With sincerity and without any presumption, Piccolo shows us how to stay here, in this world and in this country.”
Paolo Sorrentino

“Piccolo gives voice to the individual and political feelings of a committed man.”
Corriere della Sera

“On June 22, 1974, at the 78th minute of a soccer match, I became a Communist.”

It’s the 1974 World Cup, the historic quarterfinal match pitting West Germany against East Germany. A ten-year-old boy sitting in front of the TV with his father suddenly realizes he’s cheering for the wrong team. “While the stadium was silenced, between my armchair and my father’s, a small, invisible, scarcely understood wall started to rise up as if we were in the center of Berlin.”
Each man lives at least one love story that lasts throughout his life: the one with his own time and country, his marriage (often stormy) between private and public life. The great challenge of this funny, very serious and provocative personal and political novel is to tell about everything that contributes to making us who we are.
If it’s true that it takes a lifetime to become ourselves, then when we look back we notice the road is well signposted, a trail of insights, moments, shocks and mistakes: a procession of days strung together. Francesco Piccolo has written a book that is both anomalous and foreboding, a novel about the political left of our times as well as a tale of individual and collective education. It will be impossible not to recognize yourself in these pages (either by affinity or opposition), as you read about the words and things, the revelations and difficulties of our personal history – with the awareness springing from each page that everything matters.

“An era – the one in which you live – cannot be rejected, it can only be welcomed.”

Francesco Piccolo

Francesco Piccolo - © Andrea De Meo

Francesco Piccolo is a writer and screenwriter. His latest books are: Il desiderio di essere come tutti (Strega Prize 2014), L’animale che mi porto dentro (2018), the Negligible Moments trilogy and La bella confusione (2023). He has signed screenplays for Nanni Moretti, Silvio Soldini, Paolo Virzì, Francesca Archibugi, Daniele Luchetti, and Marco Bellocchio, among others. He scripted the TV series My Brilliant Friend. He collaborates with la Repubblica.

 

 

 

“With sincerity and without any presumption, Piccolo shows us how to stay here, in this world and in this country.”
Paolo Sorrentino

“Piccolo gives voice to the individual and political feelings of a committed man.”
Corriere della Sera

“A twenty years long existential journey into the mistakes of the politics.”
la Repubblica

“An amazing political self-portrait, true and astounding.”
Il Mattino

“The most ‘shameless’ and brave autobiography of the year.”
Vanity Fair

“It is as if Piccolo had written two books: one is intimate, about himself, with his first love as well. One, with a deep complexity, an autobiography of the Italian left wing.”
Il Mattino

Foreign rights sold to
Croatia: Hena
Macedonia: KSC Polica
Serbia: Laguna
The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek

Italian and international editions

Foreign publishers of Francesco Piccolo works
Albania: Fjala
Bulgaria: Ciela
Croatia: Hena
Egypt: Beba Editions
France: Denoël
Germany: Insel
The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek
Russia: Corpus
Serbia: Laguna
Spain: Anagrama
Spain (Catalan): Univers

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