Naples, "Pucundria", the new book by Maria Rosaria Selo

After the success of “Vincenzina ora ora lo sa”, Maria Rosaria Selo, writer and screenwriter of short films, winner of numerous awards, returns to the literary scene with the novel “Pucundria” published by Marotta and Cafiero.

The debut, marked last November 12th in Naples, by the presentation at the Bookstore Mondadori of the Galleria Umberto I, was accompanied by speeches by leading figures from the Neapolitan area.

Present in the room, in addition to a warm and large audience, Miryam Gison of the well-known bookshop “La bottega delle parole” of San Giorgio a Cremano, who moderated the meeting; the Director of the publishing house Marotta e Cafiero, Rosario Esposito La Rossa; the Guarantor of the Campania Region Samuele Ciambriello; Imma Carpiniello of the Social Cooperative “Lazzarelle”. The reading of some passages of the book was instead entrusted to the emotional interpretation of the actress Adele Pandolfi.

Selo, known for her ability to explore the human soul with delicacy and sensitivity,  renews the desire to tell about women, their pains, their intense lives. She does so by mirroring herself in them, recognizing their courage, love and, above all, the value of forgotten dignity.

An intent more than ever realized in this new novel of his set in the women's prison of Pozzuoli. Historic reality in a territory outraged by continuous bradyseisms, which ended up deciding its fate with the closure due to uninhabitability in May of this year.

“Pucundria”, a term that indicates a typical Neapolitan feeling of inexpressible melancholy, is the sensation that Selo felt when she entered the prison, meeting the gaze of her guests. Guests and not prisoners,  the author emphasizes, because in that prison the female inmates were given respect.

Adopt one   profoundly human terminology, Selo reiterates, is a further indication of the excellence of this facility. In fact, the prison of Pozzuoli, thanks to the activity of the social cooperative “Lazzarelle, is a flagship in the field of reintegration into work, but it is also famous for the many activities that actually took place inside.

The voice of these women torn apart by the lack of affection, especially today that many of them have been transferred far away, in the novel is interpreted by the two protagonists Anna and Teresa who, says Selo, are  stumbles in life. Condition that with the  his pen dipped in the heart, expresses in the book through suggestive and authentic brushstrokes of reality: "...they live with a handful of bitter memories in their chest, with their heart always in the mud".

As written in a note in the book, this novel is  born from a need of the heart, the same one to which it appeals  the Guarantor of the Region, Samuele Ciambriello, addressing  to the public of the Mondadori bookstore the invitation to observe  prison in the absence of  prejudices and stereotypes: “Punish is a dramatic word that this novel rewrites.[…] I like that in this novel melancholy can become hope, in order to look at prison from another point of view. […] You here are men and women of hope and  indignation and courage are the virtues of man and woman of hope.  The courage to change things that aren’t right and that need to be denounced.”

Rosario Esposito La Rossa, director of the publishing house Marotta e Cafiero, which is publishing Maria Rosaria Selo for the first time, also expressed gratitude to the author with evident satisfaction for the result achieved with her: "This is not a normal book for us, it is the book of the year with which we are going to mark a leap, we are no longer the small publishing house on the outskirts. […] With Rosi we managed to make that leap not only because we intercepted one of the best writers in our region, but we convinced her because we have a national distribution, because we do promotion, we have a project."

“Pucundria” is therefore above all the voice of the woman who conceived it with love, shaping its intensity with the darkness that  comes from the world of women somehow trampled by reality. A darkness in which, however, you can see a bright spot that gives visibility and  hope to those who no longer believe in life. A point of view that the author encapsulates in a few, significant words: “I tried to give humanity and a voice to them in this story, because that’s what you should do when you write.”