After the launch of SuperBook, a project dedicated to the promotion of Italian narrative in the United States through meetings, awards and translations and which led to New York the winners of the most important Italian literary awards, the Italian Institute of Culture in New York now introduces Inkwaves, a new review dedicated to the narrative to bring in contact readers and writers through the favorite books of the latter.
Inkwaves is in fact a cycle of meetings within which contemporary Italian writers will be asked to tell a book, written in English or in Italian, which has significantly engraved on their formation. A critical and personal conversation, in short, focused on reading as a foundational experience. The project is organized by the Italian Institute of Culture in New York together with the literary agency Alferj and includes participation, alongside the authors, of academics, translators and U.S. publishers.
The first appointment is scheduled for today, Wednesday, April 8, 2026 at 6 pm, at the headquarters of the IIC in Manhattan. Protagonist will be Chiara Barzini, an Italian writer and screenwriter known for the semi-autobiographical novel Things That Happened Before the Earthquacke, one of the few Italian bestsellers abroad and chosen as the 2017 Best Book by The Guardian. Barzini will talk about Joan Didion’s The White Album, a collection of essays published in 1979 and considered one of the most representative texts of the American New Journalism. The book deals with California in the 1960s and 1970s through social tensions, environmental crises and cultural transformations, with particular attention to the perception of disorder and the gaze that is halfway between private and public spheres.
The program will continue on April 22 with Paolo Giordano, a physicist and writer known primarily for The Loneliness of Early Numbers (Premio Strega 2008), who will instead bring Infinite Jest of David Foster Wallace. Published in 1996, Infinite Jest is one of the most complex texts of contemporary American narrative, celebrated for its fragmentary and labyrinth structure and for the analysis of addictions, entertainment and the relationship between technology and attention.
The cycle will close on June 24 with Nicola Lagioia, writer and editorial director, winner of the 2015 Strega Prize with La ferocia, who chose Gilead of Marilynne Robinson. The novel, published in 2004 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is built as a long letter written by an old father to a son who will read it only when he has disappeared. Robinson is one of the most studied American authors in the European academic field.
Article <i>Inkwaves</i>, the narrative review of the Italian Institute of Culture comes from IlNewyorkese.
