There are books that tell history.
And then there are others that do something more difficult and rare: they make you feel it.
Cuore di pellicano (Heart of a Pelican) by Maria Rosaria Intermite undoubtedly belongs to the latter category. It is a novel that does not raise its voice, but lingers. It does not seek approval, but attention. It does not presume to explain, but rather to accompany the reader through a fragile, uncertain, torn time—not so far removed from our own.
From Salento to Tuscany, Donna Caterina has won over readers throughout Italy. The protagonist of the historical novel Cuore di pellicano (Heart of a Pelican) by Taranto-based writer Maria Rosaria Intermite, this intense and unconventional female character has become, in less than a year since the book’s release, the beating heart of one of the most interesting literary cases of 2022.
The novel has attracted national and international attention thanks to a series of important awards, including second place in the Vitruvio 2022 International Literary Prize for fiction and the Le parole di Dafne Prize, awarded as part of the Il canto di Dafne International Literary Prize, among many others.
These are two awards with strong symbolic and cultural value, linked to international juries and territories—the University of Salento and the Region of Tuscany—that have recognized the quality and originality of the author’s literary work.
At the center of the narrative is Donna Caterina, a cultured young woman, poet, daughter of a world in decline. She is not a heroine in the conventional sense of the term. She does not fight with weapons, she does not harangue crowds, she does not wear the reassuring garb of patriotism. She fights in a quieter and therefore more painful way: by observing, feeling, questioning.
Through her eyes, we travel through the South between 1860 and 1861, in the heart of an Italy that is being born while another is dying. But Cuore di pellicano is not a novel about the unification of Italy. It is a novel about the emotional consequences of history, about what happens to people when great events burst into their private lives and turn them upside down.
Rosaria Intermite’s writing is deeply respectful of pain and complexity. It does not indulge in rhetoric or seek sentimental shortcuts. On the contrary, it constructs a language that embraces doubt, leaves room for cracks, and restores dignity even to uncertainty. In these pages, love is never simple, truth is never unambiguous, justice is never completely visible.
Donna Caterina does not know which side to take. And perhaps this is precisely what makes her so alive. In her dialogues with Giovanni Baldi, with Yvonne Dubois, with the characters who embody different visions of the future, a question emerges that runs through the entire novel like an open wound: is it really possible to be liberated without being heard?
The heart of the book beats in poetry. Not as decoration, but as a necessity. Caterina looks at the world through verses, as if poetry were the only way not to succumb to the brutality of reality. The poems that open the chapters are not simple introductions: they are emotional thresholds, breaths held before entering the narrative. This is where the novel finds its most moving dimension, because poetry becomes refuge, memory, resistance.
And then there is Taranto. Not just a setting, but a living, painful, luminous presence. Intermite restores to the city an ancient, cultured beauty that is often overlooked. A beauty that does not deny the shadows, but passes through them. As if telling it were an act of belated justice, a gesture of love towards what has been forgotten.
The title of the novel is not accidental. The pelican, a symbol of extreme sacrifice, encapsulates the profound meaning of this story: to love to the point of hurting oneself, to give without the certainty of receiving, to remain true to oneself even when the world changes. Caterina’s heart is exposed, vulnerable, and precisely for this reason, true.
In the finale, when the story opens up to the Mediterranean, to travel, to elsewhere, the novel makes its final emotional gesture: suggesting that nothing is truly lost as long as someone is willing to search.
Beauty, truth, love—perhaps even history—are never found where we thought they would be, but in the gaze we choose to cast on the world.
Cuore di pellicano is a book that does not console, but accompanies.
It does not absolve, but understands.
It does not simplify, but remains.
And when you close it, you are left with a rare feeling: that of having encountered a voice that had the courage to tell history with an open heart.
About the author:
Maria Rosaria Intermite.
Screenwriter and essayist, professional writer and poet from Taranto.
Twice a finalist for the Mario Luzi International Prize. Honorable mention at the 2022 Alda Merini Prize, for the Nuova Accademia dei Bronzi. And winner of the 2022 VITRUVIO INTERNATIONAL LITERARY PRIZE for Fiction with the historical novel “CUORE DI PELLICANO ”, which also boasts the NATIONAL PRIZE
CITY OF TARANTO, the INTERNATIONAL LITERARY ART AWARD IL CANTO DI DAFNE (THE SONG OF DAPHNE) and the NATIONAL YOUNG HOLDEN AWARD.
The voice of her Taranto contained in the anthology “I MILLE VOLTI DELLE OMBRE” (The Thousand Faces of Shadows) was awarded the prestigious ALFIERE DELL’ARTE E DELLA POESIA (Standard Bearer of Art and Poetry) award, reserved for artists and poets who spread Italian culture around the world on a daily basis, as she was able to give a ‘voice’ to her city, with its lights and shadows.
On the other hand, at the age of eighteen, she was already a finalist with the screenplay “La ragazza topo” in the competition organized by the CinemAvvenire Association, linked to the Venice Film Festival.
From an early age, she has collaborated with various local newspapers. She combines her knowledge of international law with in-depth knowledge of international politics.
She has collaborated with the Centro Studi di Geopolitica.info (Geopolitics Study Center), dealing with economic geopolitics, finance, and history. Her intense and deep love for her hometown has led her to take an interest in the influence of the choices made by the protagonists of global society (multinationals, hedge funds, rating agencies, sovereign wealth funds, international organizations, state entities) on the lives of individuals and communities.
Alongside this activity, she works as a SCREENWRITER for TV, documentaries, TV series, and the BIG SCREEN.
The focal point of her activity is the blog vita_e_poesia.italy, which she curates and manages.
For contacts: vitaepoesiaitaly@gmail.com
Supervisors: Collaborator with CENTRO STUDI GEOPOLITICA.INFO, FONDAZIONE MARIO LUZI EDITORE, and PRODUZIONI ARTISTICO-CULTURALI. She has also written other literary works, which have won several awards. Recently, we have seen her alongside Filippo Papa, performer, with this project: THE ADVENTURES OF GIGI E CARAMELLA.
