Von Rezzori 2025 Foreign Fiction Festival

 

This year marks the 19th iteration of the Premio Gregor von Rezzori– Città di Firenze, a literary prize awarded for the best work of foreign fiction published in Italy, and for the best translation into Italian. The prize is awarded at Florence’s annual Festival degli Scrittori (Writers’ Festival) and organised by the Santa Maddalena Foundation. 

The festival is a four-day event taking place from June 10 – 13, 2025 and will comprise literary talks, conferences, readings, and meet and greets with writers and translators in various locations across central Florence.

It will open with a Lectio Magistralis, an annual lecture given this year by Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov, winner of the 2023 International Booker Prize. The Lectio will be held at the Cenacolo of the Opera di Santa Croce at 6 pm on Tuesday, June 10. Full information on this lecture, including how to book tickets, can be found at https://www.santacroceopera.it/news-eventi/premio-von-rezzori-lectio-magistralis-santa-croce-2025/. 

On June 11 at CANGO Cantieri Goldonetta, Via Santa Maria, 25, Georgi Gospodinov will be reading from his novel Death and the Gardener (‘Il giardiniera e la morte’), set to be published in English on July 10, 2025. Gospodinov’s memoir is a deeply sensitive portrayal of the final days leading up to the death of his father and has already been highly acclaimed since its August 2024 publication in Bulgarian. 

After the reading, Gospodinov will be in conversation with his translator, Giuseppe Dell’Agata. 

More conversations between writers and the Prize jury members will take place on June 12 from 3 pm at the Altana Marielle Franco of the Biblioteca delle Oblate, Via dell’ Oriuolo, 24.

The festival will conclude with a ceremony awarding the Gregor von Rezzori– Città di Firenze winners. Names like George Saunders, Annie Ernaux, and Juan Gabriel Vásquez have previously taken home the award. 

The first novel on the Foreign Fiction shortlist for 2025 is Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! (‘Martire!’). Martyr!, Akbar’s debut novel, was published in January 2024 and follows Cyrus, the orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, and his turbulent search for a family secret. Deeply moving, funny, and original, Martyr! has already won the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Fiction and been nominated for a plethora of awards such as the Andrew Carnegie, Dublin Literary Award, and the National Book Award, among others. 

The second nominee, Leo Vardiashvili’s Hard by a Great Forest (‘Vicino a una grande foresta’), was published in January 2024. The novel explores home, memory and sacrifice and is set in post-war torn Georgia. Hard by a Great Forest is narrated by Saba, who, having fled the conflict, takes a voyage across his homeland in search of his family and closure with the past.

The next nominee is Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos, originally written in German and published in 2021. Erpenbeck’s novel follows a chance meeting between nineteen-year-old Katharina and Hans, a married man in his mid-fifties. The novel is set in late-1980s Berlin against the backdrop of the collapse of the GDR and explores the protagonists’ relationship, in all its complexity, through violence, love, obsession, and hope. Kairos won the International Booker Prize in 2024 and was nominated for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. 

Also nominated for the Foreign Fiction award is Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits (‘Eroi senza gloria’) was published in January 2024 and translated into Italian by Valentina Daniele. Set in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War, the novel is praised as both hilarious and heartfelt, an original “ode to the power of art in a time of war” (Goodreads). Glorious Exploits won the Waterstones Debut Fiction award and Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and has been nominated for many more notable prizes like the Dylan Thomas and Nero Book Award. 

Adam Thirlwell’s The Future Future (‘Il futuro futuro’) is the final nominee. Translated by Andrea Buzzi, this work of historical fiction spans both millennia and space, from France to colonial America to the moon. It follows the protagonist, Celine, as she navigates an epic journey to clear her name and change the world. Thirlwell’s 2023 novel has already been nominated for the Goldsmiths Prize. 

This year’s jury for the Foreign Fiction section is made up of President Beatrice Monti della Corte, Andrea Bajani, Alberto Manguel, Maaza Mengiste, Maylis de Kerangal, and Colm Toibín, author of 2009 Booker Prize nominee Brooklyn.

The Prize for Best Translation into Italian was awarded to Ilide Carmignani for her translation of Libro di Manuel (originally ‘Libro de Manuel’ in Spanish) by Julio Cortázar, a few excerpts of which will be read by Fausto Russo Alesi. The novel was originally published in 1973 in direct response to growing political repression in Latin America, particularly Argentina. 

Carmignani has an extensive background in Spanish and Latin American literature and literary translation and has previously translated works by esteemed writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Almudena Grandes and Pablo Neruda. 

The winner of Best Translation into Italian was decided by Andrea Landolf and Paola Del Zoppo.  (Keziah McCann)

For more information on the Premio Gregor von Rezzori– Città di Firenze and Writers’ Festival, visit https://premiogregorvonrezzori.org/?lang=en.