At the Campania Libri Festival, writer Gianni Solla talks about "The Memory of Leaves."

Naples welcomed the arrival of autumn with the fifth edition of the Campania Libri Festival, the publishing fair chaired by Alessandro Barbano and directed by Ruggero Cappuccio. From October 1st to 4th, the Palazzo Reale once again became a meeting place dedicated to books, authors, and readers, under the slogan "Jesce Sole," chosen to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of La Gatta Cenerentola by Maestro Roberto De Simone, who passed away a year ago.

Thanks in part to particularly favorable weather, especially over the weekend, the public was able to participate in a packed schedule of meetings, presentations, and cultural exchanges, confirming the event's growth within the publishing landscape of Southern Italy.

In this context, on Saturday, October 3rd, writer Gianni Solla met with the Festival audience, offering numerous insights into his latest novel, The Memory of the Leaves, published by Einaudi. In an engaging conversation with Deborah Divertito, the speaker at the event, the author addressed complex themes such as fragility, care, the relationship with the land, and the profound bond that unites people to one another and to the places they inhabit.

Through the family story at the heart of the novel, Solla explores the vulnerabilities of his characters using powerful and evocative images, delving into the most intimate recesses of the human experience. An experience marked by deep cracks that, far from representing a simple wound, allow a light to shine through, capable of transforming fragility into the possibility of rebirth.

The novel's protagonist, Lorenzo, has a family "...who experiences grief in solitude, yet remain within the same archipelago," Solla explained to the audience. The author described each member as a small island: an entity that deals with its own wound in an intimate way, yet remains inextricably linked to the others.

The narrative captures Lorenzo at a delicate stage, forced to deal with a pain that continues to creep into his soul—the pain of his wife, who passed away when their children Roberta and Tommaso were young—compounded by the dismay of losing his job, which comes at an age when starting over from scratch represents a daunting challenge, especially when life has already stripped away the most important certainties.

In The Memory of the Leaves, the author conveys his intent to describe "a peripheral neighborhood, on the margins, through a place that resists." Indeed, a nursery, once owned by Lorenzo's family, becomes the physical and emotional resource the protagonist clings to in an attempt to save himself, far beyond his mere work.

What Solla described as "that square of land and greenery, nestled between the Bronx buildings of San Giovanni a Teduccio" thus becomes the embodiment of concrete resistance. A botanical space in a neighborhood located in eastern Naples; a place rarely discussed, and poorly—too often marred by narratives of degradation or by gruesome news reports—but one that preserves precious resources, such as the sea, an important library, and structures that should finally be accorded their dignity.

The author's words thus led the meeting to a profound dimension, reflecting the centrality of the theme of care. A concrete act of active presence, reserved in the novel for plants, but also for the choice of words, relationships, and memory. An attitude focused on time that, consistently applied, leaves its mark even when life ends or relationships end.

Because, as Gianni Solla pointed out, "care itself can never end. The time we dedicated, the closeness, the overlapping of our bodies, the listening: all that happened." Care, as a daily choice, is therefore not an abstract feeling, but a practical exercise that transforms even wounds into scars: the exact point from which each of us can start over.