The jury of the Ennio Flaiano Under 35 Award:
“A novel about our neglected capacity to possess and express our desires.”
“a novel that moves between the personal essay and investigative writing, between a fascination with the apocalypse and the need to focus on desire — both one’s own and that of the world.” –ilLibraio
[...] When his friend Max Brod asked him if outside of this discouraging vision there still remained a glimmer of hope, Kafka replied with a smile that there was an infinite amount of hope, just not for us.
In that comma, and behind that defeatist adversative conjunction, Cosentino writes, "lies the margin for continuing to want. The more we feel excluded from the possibility of achieving something, in fact, the more we have to imagine, to await, to build—that is, the more we nourish the desire." —Chiara De Nardi, Doppiozero
Winner of Ennio Flaiano Under 35 Award
An inventory of the small, everyday things, capable of capturing the essence of those seemingly negligible moments which, upon reflection, are what truly make us feel alive.
An Italian male, thirty-two years old, 186 cm by 70 kg, superficial and very deep, individualistic and very generous, comfortable with the definition of “man of his time”, especially if by “his” he means “someone else’s”.
He is H, the protagonist of this story.
A man who is fed up with the pessimism that surrounds him, and not even his own. Arrived in Milan from the Calabrian province, he has dedicated the last few years to writing an essay on the end of the world, but History —between wars, pandemics and various disasters— has offered him too much material, so much so that his work has become outdated.
So he then decided to change course and concentrate on something else entirely: desires. Ambitious, shy, common, impossible, unmentionable… Armed with a notebook and tape recorder, H asks friends, family, the partner he would like to marry and everyone he meets a seemingly simple question: “What does your heart desire most?”
H is curious to map the world’s hopes, of course, but also to better understand himself; to find out if, among the dreams of others, lurks his own.
Nicola H Cosentino has written an investigation on desire, on the anxieties of our time.
Before, in the age of irresponsibility, I was more absolutist, I hoped big, I used the verb “to want” with ease, and I waited patiently for the miracle to happen; now that I’m irrefutably an adult and have understood that all the results of my life will depend ont eh cooperation between me, money, and carbon dioxide, I don’t know where to point the finger. At another finger?