Today we talk about The summer of 1989, a book by Enrico Tessarin, published with our publishing house Europe Books.
Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author Enrico Tessarin, to get to know him better, where he found the inspiration to write his book The summer of 1989, as well as how he would describe his writing style.
Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!
- Was the idea for this book born at a particular moment? What was that?
The book was inside of me for a very long time. I felt that summer truly changed my life, changed me as a person and was the beginning of a process that culminated a few years later with the decision of going to live in. London and go to film school. Nothing of that would have happened without that summer. The excitement, the doubts, the self-analysis and the sense that my world was changing forever and was there to be lived and explored. I wrote the book when I could look back to my youth and analyse it critically. Thinking about all the choices, good or bad, and their consequences. However, it also made me appreciate how lucky I was to have had such a happy life and how the world around me contributed to my happiness. I hope to be able to share some of that happiness to the readers. Until that summer I hardly ever left Italy. I haven’t stopped travelling and exploring ever since.
- What would you like to communicate to your reader through this work?
I hope I communicate a world I know very well to another world that doesn’t know it exists. This is maybe why I write in English about Italy and what IU lived in Italy. I feel there was a lot of joy and wisdom that I learnt in those years and I wanted to pass it on to my children first (so the book as memory – almost like a diary) but also to people around the world. I was amazed by how people (English first but also, from the rest of Europe, Asia or even America) who had never lived my specific Italian middle class, small village upbringing, were fascinated by my world, its stories and its incredible characters. This was the moment when I felt the book probably had a market beyond Italy. I loved the fact that people seem to connect to how global something very personal is and how it resonates to people around the world. How people from Hong Kong could be fascinated and laugh at the story of the pear tree in my father’s kitchen garden still feels like a blessing today. I also feel that readers connect to the landscape, the social bonds, the sense of community typical of Italy that is essential in the book and very much a part of my upbringing.
- How would you describe your writing style?
I love colloquial, straight forward writing. Almost as if the writer is telling a story to his friends at the bar. Writing to me is joyful and full of irony. I love how characters (a little bit like myself of course) don’t take themselves too seriously and can laugh at themselves and at the events around them even when they are very serious indeed – such as in 1989. I like to keep it visual and describe the scenes almost as if we were watching a film (as it is something I appreciate when I read a screenplay). My characters talk in simple words. They use words in a simple way. They are not intellectuals, they are real. But they are connected to the world and they can’t wait to discover and connect to that world that until 1989 they had only seen on TV.
- How was your publishing experience?
My publishing experience to be honest so far has been amazing. It is my first book and I was terrified after I finished it (much credit to my partner in life and in Business, Winnie, who always pushed me and motivated me to finish. But frankly after finishing the book (almost 18 months ago) I really didn’t expect to find a publisher so quickly. Winnie sent 10 emails we got three offers and Europe books was my far the best. From that moment on it went swimmingly. Winnie and our editor Clare edited the book – often with little contribution from me. One of my best friend is a wonderful graphic novel artist (Paolo Zaniboni, son of the famous Sergio Zaniboni designer of Tex Willer and Diabolik – two of the most famous Italian comics ever) designed the cover and a few months later I received the first 100 copies of the book at my door. It was an amazing emotion to receive those boxes, to have my partner (and my children) read the book. It was a great emotion to sell the book through amazon with the link from the publisher. And now doing my first interview on the book….and I have sent already the book to two well-known TV directors who hopefully may want to make it into a film. Can’t ask for more. Just Amazing. I hope the book will resonate with readers especially since it seems those days in 1989, when the world was opening up in ways that seemed impossible just a few months before, would act as inspiration in these years where the global political and social outlook seems to be going in the opposite direction. I hope the book will provide hope.
- Are you working on a new writing project you can tell us about?
Of course. I am a screenwriter as well as writer so I have a TV series called MAGMA – Co-written with my partner Winnie that we hope to develop in Hong Kong. Bookwise I am halfway through my second book called ‘Second chances’ which I hope to finish by the end of the year. After that I will tackle the second book of the summer trilogy where my protagonist, Alberto Soriani, will come back and go to live in London. So, the little boy from the village who dreams about making films has finally convinced his parents to let him to go to London and go to film school. Will he succeed?
Europe Books thanks the author Enrico Tessarin once again for taking the time and answering our questions. We are really pleased to have walked alongside him on the editorial path that led to the publication of his book The summer of 1989. We wish him the best of luck for his book and for his future works.
To you, my dear reader, I wish this book will fascinate and capture you with its stories and characters. I also wish that the book resonates with the personal experiences of readers who can remember with pleasure those past days and help them see what’s happening in their life, nowadays, with new perspectives.
So, my dear reader, all I have to say is to enjoy your reading!
Your editor!