Sardinia has fallen in love with the debut novel by Martino Giordano, Variazioni sul tema, published by the publishing house Solferino. A week after winning the Iannas Prize, the Palermo writer returned to the island to be awarded another literary prize: this time, it is the second edition of the “Laura Grasso” Prize for LGBTQIA+ Literature.
Another book from the Otago stable also made it into the third finalist: Il sesso degli alberi by Alessio Arena (Fandango Libri).
The jury of the published books section, composed of Giovanni Follesa, Venera Leto, Gian Pietro Leonardi, and Silvia Antosa, during the award ceremony on October 26, placed Martino Giordano’s novel on the highest step of the podium, an intense and passionate debut work on the theme of gender transition, which tells two parallel stories destined to meet: that of Lidia, a twenty-three-year-old talented cellist who finds herself at a crossroads, and that of Leo, who lives in Prague between hotel rooms and nightclubs.
The prize, organized by the social promotion association Baa Bà and dedicated to the memory of the LGBTQIA+ rights activist Laura Grasso, awarded the winner a cash prize and a raku ceramic depicting in a stylized form Laura Grasso releasing a book into the sky with rainbow colors.
