Donatella Di Pietrantonio wins 2024 Strega Prize

Author vows to use voice to defend women's rights

By: ansa.it

Jul 05 2024
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Donatella Di Pietrantonio wins

Donatella Di Pietrantonio was announced the winner of the 2024 Strega Prize, Italy's top literary award, overnight for her novel 'L'Età Fragile' (The Fragile Age).
    The book, published by Einaudi, focuses on the relationship between a woman and her young adult daughter during the COVID-19 pandemic.
    It also tackles the issue of gender violence by referring a crime case that occurred in Di Pietrantonio's native Abruzzo in 1997.
    "I promise that I will use my written and oral voice to defend the rights that my generation of women fought hard for and which today can no longer be taken for granted," said Di Pietrantonio, who, despite her success as a writer, has never left her day job as a children's dentist.
    L'Età Fragile prevailed with 189 votes, well ahead of Dario Voltolini's 'Invernale' with 143 in second.
    The 62-year writer won another of Italy's top literary awards, the Premio Campiello, with her third novel Arminuta in 2017.
    Di Pietrantonio had already won the Strega Giovani Prize, the version of Italy's top literary competition judged by teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18 from over 100 secondary schools in Italy and abroad, for L'Età Fragile.