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Viola Di Grado
Viola Di Grado is an Italian author with works published in several…
DiscoverViola di Grado at Oxford Literary Festival
Award-winning Italian novelist Viola di Grado talks about her new novel of obsessive and all-consuming love, Blue Hunger.
The story finds two women in a Shanghai skyscraper who swallow little yellow pills that will make all things dangerous feel safe. Xu and Ruben are both running from a turbulent past. Xu pushes Ruben to extremes of pleasure and pain. The novel asks how we create our identities and how we escape them.
‘Blue Hunger, a prose poem and a fearless descent into language and the realm of meanings, is about our experience in the acidic lights of the contemporary world.’ Filippo la Porta, La Repubblica
Di Grado was the youngest winner of Italy’s Premio Campiello Opera Prima with her first novel, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool. She is also author of Hollow Heart and Fuoco al Cielo, winner of the Premio Viareggio Selezione della Giuria.
This event is part of Italian day at the festival.
For more information and to book your ticket, visit the event website here.
Blue Hunger
An Irish Times Book of the Year
An electrifying descent from loneliness and grief into obsessive, all-consuming love, by an Italian literary star.
‘When Xu bites me, when she has me in her teeth, naked and bad on top of me, everything is good.’
In a skyscraper apartment overlooking Shanghai’s blue-tinged, pulsating nightlife and filled with rotting food, two women swallow little yellow pills that will make all things dangerous feel safe. They’re both running from a turbulent past.
In abandoned factories and dilapidated slaughterhouses, Xu pushes Ruben to extremes of pleasure and pain that she has…
