'Let's Disarm Ignorance' Award: Young Writer from Cava Wins

Cava de Tirreni. The "Disarming Ignorance" literary prize was won by the young Cava native Alfonso Maria Di Somma with his story "Letter to the Moon."

The prestigious literary and cultural prize “Disarmiamo l'ignorazione” was held in Pontedera in the province of Pisa last Sunday, in the evocative setting of Villa Crastan, a very valuable neo-Renaissance style palace designed by the architect Arrighi in 1928.

This year the competition saw a young writer from Cava, Alfonso Maria Di Somma, emerge as the winner in two categories: Free Theme Section and Short Story.

The author also won a special mention in the poetry section with a lovely composition called “Come gli uccelli”.

In the Short Story section, a work that Alfonso Di Somma composed during the hardest period of the pandemic entitled “Letter from the Moon” was awarded.
The commission considered that the writer: "Through an imaginative and original narrative intuition, a poetic personalization and an intriguing use of the epistolary genre, presents a letter written from the Moon to terrestrial beings, with decisive and profound warnings on the dehumanization and ethical, social, political and environmental distortions present on the planet, such that, seen with a dystopian gaze from an external angle, become much more serious and unforgivable than they may appear to the eyes of those who experience them first hand. With passionate prose and an elegant, pregnant and always appropriate language, he stimulates emotions and manages to envisage in the melancholy of the sunset a red evening that gives hope for the return of a proper rationality in the management of our "Common Home". Equally suggestive was the story "A look into my abyss" which decreed first place for the young writer also in the Short Story category.

The jury expressed itself in a flattering manner also for this work in which the writer narrates, with a mature and lucid style, the drama of a young man of our days. The character of this story, finding himself on the edge of an abyss and tormented by social inequalities, gives in to the flattery of the underworld but manages to "save himself" thanks to the ethical and cultural substratum given to him by the school and the fundamental reference of a special professor. The two works both present themselves as a warning and at the same time a positive stimulus for the reader, encouraging him to overcome the difficult moments that life presents to everyone.