Roberto Cotroneo

Roberto Cotroneo 2012

Roberto Cotroneo (born May 10, 1961 in Alessandria , Italy ) is an Italian journalist , writer and critic . He became known beyond the country's borders with his book When a Child on Summer Morning - Letter to my son about the love of books and his novels.

Life

Roberto Cotroneo was born on May 10, 1961 in Alessandria, Piedmont . He studied philosophy in Turin and was trained to play the piano at the Conservatory of Alessandria.

He began his literary work in 1983 with the magazine L'Europeo , for which he wrote articles in the features section. From 1987 to 2003 he worked in the editorial department of the Roman news magazine L'Espresso . From 1993 he was responsible for the cultural section there and became one of the journal's most important literary critics. He also wrote reviews for the Sunday edition of Il Sole 24 Ore under the pseudonym "Mamurio Lancillotto" . He also taught journalism at the Scuola Superiore di Giornalismo e Comunicazioni di Massa of the private university LUISS in Rome. Since 2004 he has been a regular commentator for the newspaper L'Unità and writes for the weekly magazine Panorama and for the radio station Radio 2 .

His first book All'Indice was published in 1991 . Sulla cultura degli anni Ottanta , which brings together his most important literary reviews of these years. Three years later he published the volume of essays When a Child is on a Summer Morning. Letter to my son about his love for books , in which he introduces his then two-year-old son to the authors who have influenced him the most (from Robert Louis Stevenson to TS Eliot , JD Salinger and Thomas Bernhard to Umberto Eco ).

His first novel, Presto Con Fuoco (Eng .: The Lost Score ), which is about a lost composition by Chopin and a world-famous pianist who is strongly reminiscent of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli , won the Italian literary prize Premio Selezione Campiello in 1996 . In his second novel, Otranto , Cotroneo declares his love for the often misunderstood Apulian region of Salento . Other novels, such as L'età perfetta (German: The perfect age ) and Per un attimo immenso ho dimenticato il mio nome (German: Tempestad ), deal with seduction, interpreted through the Song of Solomon , the game of chess and the last string quartets Beethoven's . L'età perfetta won the Fenice Europe Prize in 1999 . With the essay Eco: due o tre cose che so di lui , he honors his role model Umberto Eco , and with Chiedimi chi erano i Beatles. Lettera a mio figlio sull'amore per la musica (Eng. Ask me who the Beatles are: letter to my son about the love of music ) he follows on from his volume of essays from 1994 and introduces important composers to his second son. The short novel Questo Amore , published in 2006, was published in 2008 as This Love in German.

Die Jahre aus Blei , published in German in 2010, takes place in the 1970s, when a no longer manageable fight, with mutual infiltration, raged between Brigate Rosse ( Red Brigades ), old fascists and the secret services.

Works

• All'Indice. Sulla cultura degli anni Ottanta , Armando Editore, Rome 1991
• Se una mattina d'estate un bambino. Lettera a mio figlio sull'amore per i libri , Frassinelli, Milan 1994; 3rd ext. 2001 edition

dt .: When a child on a summer morning. Letter to my son about the love of books , translated and with an afterword by Burkhart Kroeber , Marion von Schröder, Düsseldorf 1996; New edition after the 3rd, ext. Edition, Insel , Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-458-17133-9

• Presto con fuoco , Mondadori , Milan 1995

German: The lost score , translated by Burkhart Kroeber, Insel, Frankfurt / M. 1997, ISBN 3458168672 ; TB Suhrkamp, ​​1999, ISBN 3-518-39526-2

• Otranto , Mondadori, Milan 1997

German: Otranto , translated by Burkhart Kroeber, Insel, Frankfurt / M. 1998, ISBN 3-458-16922-9

• L'età perfetta , Rizzoli, Milan 1999

German: The perfect age , translated by Karin Krieger, Insel, Frankfurt / M. 2000, ISBN 3-458-17006-5

• Eco: due o tre cose che so di lui , Bompiani, Milan 2001
• Per un attimo immenso ho dimenticato il mio nome , Mondadori, Milan 2002

German: Tempestad , translated by Karin Krieger, Insel, Frankfurt / M. 2003

• Chiedimi chi erano i Beatles. Lettera a mio figlio sull'amore per la musica , Mondadori, Milan 2005

dt .: Ask me who the Beatles are. Letter to my son about the love of music , translated by Karin Krieger, Insel, Frankfurt / M. 2006, ISBN 3-458-17304-8

• Questo Amore , Mondadori, Milan 2006

German: This love , translated by Karin Krieger, Insel, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-458-17403-5

• Il vento dell'odio , Mondadori, Milan 2008

German: The years made of lead , translated by Karin Krieger, Insel, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-458-17479-0

literature

• Susanne Gramatzki: "Roberto Cotroneo: From Critic to Author", in: Italian storytelling literature of the eighties and nineties. Contemporary authors in individual monographs , edited by Felice Balletta and Angela Barwig, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. (et al.) 2002, ISBN 3-631-39368-7 , pp. 287-297.
• Susanne Gramatzki: "Enigmatic storytelling. Narrative procedures in contemporary Italian novels, presented in Roberto Cotroneo's 'Otranto'", in: Italian. Journal for Italian Language and Literature 57 (2007), pp. 46–66.
• Karsten Kruschel : Tempestad , in: The Science Fiction Year 2004 , edited by Sascha Mamczak and Wolfgang Jeschke , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-453-87896-5 , pp. 871–873.
• Karsten Kruschel: This love , in: The Science Fiction Year 2009 , edited by Sascha Mamczak and Wolfgang Jeschke, Heyne Verlag, Munich 2009, pp. 1349–1351.
• Karsten Kruschel: Otranto , in: The Science Fiction Year 2000 , edited by Wolfgang Jeschke. Heyne Verlag, Munich 2000, pp. 782-784.

Web links

• Literature by and about Roberto Cotroneo in the catalog of the German National Library
• official homepage about Cotroneo (Italian)
• unofficial homepage about Cotroneo (Italian)