Short-listed for Premio Strega 2023
La Lettura – Classifica di qualità 2022
“Andrea Canobbio writes so well that you almost can’t see it, with a style, narrative structure and dry intelligence capable of summoning all armies to battle his father’s unspeakable depression.” La Repubblica
“The Night Crossing is a novel that moves relentlessly toward the last move, holding together autobiography, photographic documents, topographical and engineering minutiae, private correspondence, anthropological digressions, and a literary style unique in Italy, in which sadness and irony move the scene together.” Andrea Bajani, Il Venerdì
“Canobbio’s prose, paratactic, slow, measured, is troubled only by slight ripples, when he thinks he understands and when he realizes he does not.” Corriere della Sera
“La traversata notturna is the resounding tale of a life, multiple lives, real and mental biography, love and edges relationship of a son with his parents.” Corrado Augias
“It is, in every possible sense, the book of Canobbio’s life.” Daniele Giglioli, La Lettura
“It is a book that fascinates and moves.” Elisabetta Rasy, Il Sole 24 ore
“Canobbio gathers here his own refined talents – some of them vertiginous” Dario Voltolini, Doppiozero
“My father’s fall and my mother’s reaction are at the origin of my writing.”
Motivated by the desire to rid himself of the memories that never cease to torment him, the narrator of this book decides to take a trip to his city, transformed for the occasion into a great theatre of memory. And as in any adventure worthy of the name, he equips himself with the magic weapons necessary for the feat: a map of eighty-one squares, a collection of love letters and some old diaries full of notes.
The city is Turin, the story is that of a post-war Italian couple, of their falling in love, getting married and living first happily ever after, and then unhappily ever after. They meet in 1943: he, an engineer officer and future engineer, has just returned from Russia. She loves music and poetry. They marry in 1946, they start a family. The years of reconstruction soon become the years of the economic miracle, which soon become the years of protest and crisis. The engineer, succumbing to melancholy, digs a personal tunnel where he remains trapped, trapping his wife and children as well.
Disseminating the fragments of time in the space of the city, the narrator investigates the mysterious reasons for the depression of the father. In the end, however, no reason seems sufficient to explain thirty years of irremediable sadness. He realises that it is precisely the most painful memories that allow him not to interrupt the dialogue with his parents – whom, after all, he does not want to make disappear from his life. In this crossing, the reader will choose whether to linger in the places of the familiar novel or venture on more unpredictable and hidden paths. Here he will encounter haunted houses, martyrs and relics, equestrian monuments, Swiss scales, Egyptian papyri, anthropologists and architects; and then white horses, pale foxes torpedo fish and many other animals. But having reached the last pages he will recognise the voices that ring out clearly between the lines: those of those who left, and he offers a last chance to meeting those who have remained.
Read an excerpt in English (PDF)
Andrea Canobbio
Andrea Canobbio made his debut in the anthology Giovani blues. Under 25, edited by Pier Vittorio Tondelli in 1986, with the short story Diario del centro. He then published the collection of short stories Vasi cinesi (1989), with which he won the Premio Grinzane opera prima and the Premio Mondello opera prima. This was followed by the novels Traslochi (1992), Padri di padri (1997), Indivisibili (2000), and Il naturale disordine delle cose (2004), which won the Premio Brancati. He subsequently published two short autobiographical texts Presentimento (2007) and Mostrarsi (2011). In 2013 he published Tre anni luce, which won the Premio Mondello Opera Italiana. His most recent book is La traversata notturna (2022).
La traversata notturna, a selected press review (PDF)
Listen to Andrea Canobbio on L’isola deserta (Rai Radio 3)
Listen to Andrea Canobbio on Il cacciatore di libri (Radio24)
Foreign publishers of Andrea Canobbio’s works
France: Seuil, Gallimard
Germany: Rowohlt, Lettre International 85
The Netherlands: Meulenhoff
Portugal: Dom Quixote
Spain: Circe, Salamandra
UK and US: FSG, MacLehose Press, The Threepenny Review