Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The e-books will be downloadable for free from 15 April to 30 June from the website www.comune.milano.it/milanodaleggere

Milan, 15 April 2020 – The appointment with “Milano da Leggere” is back, the initiative to promote reading created by the Milanese library system which allows you to download and read a selection of digital books for free. From today, and until June 30th, it will be possible to freely download works by Milanese writers, by birth or election, from the website www.comune.milano.it/milanodaggeredieci.

This fifth edition of "Milano da Leggere" is part of the cultural program promoted by the Municipality of Milan | Culture and dedicated to "The talents of women": it will therefore be an all-female edition which will host, until 30 June, works by female writers whose rights have been kindly granted by the authors themselves and their publishers, together with other titles, no longer on the market, which deserve to be valorised and brought back to the attention of the public.

“The last four editions have seen around 300 thousand downloads of the 40 works proposed, and have offered readers the opportunity to delve deeper into different perspectives on our city through different cuts and styles – declared the Councilor for Culture Filippo Del Corno -. The success of this initiative in recent years has convinced us to renew it, even more so in this moment of emergency, proposing a reading of Milan through the female gaze and the words of Milanese writers, in order to express through reading the 'Talents of Women' to whom the city's 2020 is dedicated".

Due to the ongoing health emergency, this edition will allow you to download the e-books directly from the Municipality of Milan website but not, as happened in previous editions, by framing the QR code printed on the "Milano da Leggere" posters with your smartphone posted in ATM stations. Furthermore, the titles will not all be available immediately but will be released on a weekly basis, every Wednesday starting from April 15th, and will all remain downloadable until June 30th.

Milan, as always, is the backdrop to the stories that will keep you company until June 30th: a plurality of genres, themes, stylistic figures to represent the kaleidoscope of the female world, in its intimate or social, real or imaginary traits , with accents that are sometimes humorous, other times more committed.

The strength of intuition is at work in Rosa Teruzzi's mystery who with "La fioraia del Giambellino" - the opening book of "Milano daread" 2020 which will be downloadable as early as April 15th - gives us the second adventure of the eccentric trio of Milanese investigators. Another crime writer is Maria Alberta Scuderi, unknown to most although she won the 1984 Alberto Tedeschi prize for the best unpublished crime novel with “Assassinio al Garibaldi” – the only book published – of the XNUMX Alberto Tedeschi prize, now re-proposed with the original preface by Luca Crovi.

Courage, competence and tenacity are the distinctive traits of the women of our present who have led their revolution in the family, in the world of work or in society: one hundred stories to inspire, collected by Annalisa Monfreda in "Women like us".

The look at customs, family and everyday life is left to the pen of Brunella Gasperini, who for twenty-five years has dialogued with women through Annabella's post. “A woman and other animals” tells a family chronicle from the 70s with wit, non-conformism and irony, which is not at all dated.

Gasperini will also be offered an unpublished presentation by Patrizia Carrano and an interpretation read by Lella Costa, her declared admirers.
Irony and self-irony are also the hallmarks of Carmen Covito's novel in which the protagonist, not ugly but, worse, ugly, is looking for her own way of asserting herself. “La bruttina stagionata”, which won the 1993 Bancarella prize, was recently republished with a brilliant introduction by Natalia Aspesi.

The universe of feelings narrated with a vivid and contemporary style is the terrain on which Ester Viola's lively writing moves, offering us "The Unmatched", sequel to the successful "Love is eternal as long as it lasts".

Civil and environmental commitment, in years in which little or nothing was talked about ecology, are the trait of Laura Conti, doctor as well as writer, whose touching novel "Cecilia and the witches" has been republished, which she tackles with rare grace the theme of pain and illness, which has unfortunately become tragically topical.

The passion and courage of Camilla Cederna's journalism, capable of imposing her in the world of information, then predominantly male, are at the center of "Il mondo di Camilla". The book retraces years of activity of the great journalist, and with them of Italian history, told in first person and examined by the impeccable editorial work of Grazia Cherchi.

Historical research is the passion of Carla Maria Russo who with "Lola will be born at eighteen" transports us to the Milan of 1943. During the darkest period of fascism, a story told by many voices unfolds which intertwines passion, injustice, blows of scene.

The voice of poetry is not missing with the collection "Desiderio di cose luce" by Antonia Pozzi, whose overflowing and disordered emotionality was little understood in the intellectual environment of her time.

“Milan to read” 2020 is created in collaboration with the writers, the publishers Bompiani, Einaudi, Piemme, Salani, Sonzogno, Sperling&Kupfer, the heirs of Camilla Cederna, Laura Conti, Brunella Gasperini, Maria Alberti Scuderi who have kindly made the works.

Heartfelt thanks are also due to the friendly collaboration of Lella Costa and Patrizia Carrano. The initiative also sees the collaboration of ATM – Azienda Trasporti Milanesi S.p.A..

The 2016 experimental edition saw 4.500 e-books downloaded in the period 1 March - 10 April, while in 2017 the thematic section "Milan in yellow", which told the story of "black Milan" from the mid-800th century to the present day, conquered the reading public with over 115.000 e-books downloaded in the period 10 March - 31 May. In 2018 the "Milano da laugh", from 23 April to 30 June, saw around 80 thousand downloads, while the 2019 edition "Milano comico" (also from 23 April to 30 June), over 95 thousand.