In memoriam: Michela Murgia (1972-2023)

Inclusive searches & sources@UvA Romance languages (13)

Widely commented on in the international press – see among others The Guardian and The New York Times – Italian writer Michela Murgia passed away on last August 10th.

Thanks to both her literary achievements (her novel Accabadora won the Premio Campiello in 2010) and her thought-provoking opinions on topics such as fascism, gender-based violence, and LGBTQ+ rights, Murgia was a well-known public figure in Italy.

source: Artribune

Among Murgia’s literary output, the following – both fiction and essays – are available at the UvA Library, together with her short story L’eredità, part of Sei per la Sardegna (Einaudi, 2014), an anthology edited by fellow Sardinian writer Marcello Fois. (On the Italian island literary production you may want to check our post Sardinia: hidden treasures of Contemporary Italian literature).

• Accabadora, Einaudi, 2014.
• Ave Mary: E la chiesa inventò la donna, Einaudi, 2018.
• Chirù, Einaudi, 2016.
• Futuro interiore, Einaudi, 2016.
• God save the queer: Catechismo femminista, Einaudi, 2022.
• Istruzioni per diventare fascisti, Einaudi, 2018.
• Il mondo deve sapere: Romanzo tragicomico di una telefonista precaria, Einaudi, 2017.
• Persone che devi conoscere, Edizioni Messaggero, 2018.
• Stai zitta: E altre nove frasi che non vogliamo sentire piu’, Einaudi, 2021.

Within the scope of this blog series, Stai zitta: E altre nove frasi che non vogliamo sentire più has already been mentioned in a previous post on How to search for UvA books on inclusive language: In French, Italian, or Spanish: its feminist arguments – related or not to Murgia’s catholic faith – recur also in Ave Mary: E la chiesa inventò la donna, and God save the queer: Catechismo femminista. While Istruzioni per diventare fascisti tackles on fascism’s discriminatory and exclusionary discourse and practices, therefore resonating with this series’ focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.

More (biographical) information on Michela Murgia can be found at the Enciclopedia Treccani (in Italian) and at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW), a useful resource on women authors (in the Romance languages, French, and German) from the Institute of Languages Cultures & Societies (School of Advanced Study. University of London).