Arnoldo Mondadori Editore : Paolo Cognetti wins the 2017 Premio Strega 2017 with “Le otto montagne”

On Thursday 6 July, in the captivating space of the Ninfeo of the Villa Giulia in Rome, Paolo Cognetti won the 71 Premio Strega with his nove Le otto montagne (The Eight Mountains). The author, who also won the 4 edition of the Premio Strega Giovani 2017, an award for young writers, clearly moved and delighted by this prestigious recognition, dedicated the prize to the mountains, 'because it's an area that has been abandoned, forgotten and destroyed, often by the city, and I decided that I wanted to write about that. I have tried to be a sort of spokesman, a go-between, for the mountains, the plain and the city, that all seem very far away. I also try to write these stories for people who don't know the mountains and live too far away from them, trying, in some way, to save the world I live in.' 'Being here,' he added, 'is like a dream come true, not so much a dream of winning a prize, as being a writer and being able to live on my work.'

From the beginning, Le otto montagne has been a literary phenomenon, something that was made clear by the competition among the publishers who wanted to publish it around the world. In fact, the novel has already been translated into more than 30 languages.