ACCABADORA

Sardinia in the 1950s. A village still steeped in ancestral traditions. As is custom, Maria, the youngest child in an overly large family, is adopted by Tzia Bonaria, who has no children of her own. Feared and respected, Bonaria is an accabadora: a seamstress by day, she weaves the thread of life; and standing in for the Fates at night, she cuts it, putting an end to prolonged agonies. Will Maria accept her role as the daughter of this last mother, with all that it entails? Michela Murgia’s spellbinding novel, a vibrant tale of the whispering of souls, awakened in Francesco Filidei a powerful desire for opera: aware of how much he owed his vocation to his Sardinian origins, he wanted to bestow upon this world steeped in extraordinary vocal imagery all the operatic potential it deserved. Intertwining the motifs that make up a culture marked by powerful rituals, Valentina Carrasco captures the omnipresence of a land that both nourishes and suffocates, and the ambivalence of a character akin to a walnut containing a treasure.