Dwarf has made up her mind: in a few days she will turn her little life upside down. She leaves, takes the train and moves to Rome. She abandons her lifelong friends and her Naples, lust and lack of moral boundaries.
Naples of great contradictions, full of sunshine and music but also desperate angry and violent. The Naples of the neighborhoods where precisely Nanà lives. stifled by a reckless, often borderline life of sex and drugs, from which the girl wants to escape.
He wants closure with what has been his life up to that point: perdition, drugs, transgression, violence and disappointments. So she reaches out to her new love Nic.
Yet somehow the past always seems to pursue it, even elsewhere.
This is the story told in “The Summer of Dwarf” by Chiara Clausi.
Born in a small town in Calabria, the author herself wanted to see what lay beyond regional borders. First in Rome, then in Turin, and finally in Beirut, where she lived from 2016 to 2022 before returning again to Turin, Clausi now writes for several newspapers: Il Giornale, Il Venerdì, Il Foglio, to name a few.
Clausi will present his novel tomorrow, April 29, in Rome at 7 p.m. at the Sinestetica bookstore on Viale Tirreno 70 a/b in a dialogue with Sky journalist Simona Vasta.
The character in the book has the traits of the prostitute Anna Coupeau, known as Nanà, the protagonist of Emile Zola’s masterpiece. The author was inspired by her, as well as by the tragic heroines of Thomas Hardy. But there is also some inspiration drawn from reality, from encounters made and stories heard.
Born in a small town in Calabria, the author herself wanted to see what lay beyond regional borders. First in Rome, then in Turin, and finally in Beirut, where she lived from 2016 to 2022, before returning again to Turin.
Clausi today writes for several newspapers: Il Giornale, Il Venerdì, Il Foglio, to name but a few. “The Summer of Dwarf” is his third book.
In 2022 he had published “Beirut au revoir” (Countries Editions), a long reportage on the Lebanese capital. In 2024, also for Affiori, it had been the turn of his first novel “Claudine.”
