Sandro Veronesi & Nicolai Lilin

Outside Italy, most people first heard of Sandro Veronesi thanks to In de ban van mijn vader, his beautiful novel about a man whose certainties begin to collapse when it is suggested that his father led a double life. Those fragile certainties remain a theme in Veronesi’s work, as seen in his masterpiece Kalme chaos, in which the protagonist Pietro Paladini saves a woman from drowning while, at the same time, disaster strikes at home. Kalme chaos won Italy’s most important literary prize, was named Best European Novel in France, and was also beautifully adapted into a film starring Nanni Moretti in the lead role.

“Kalme chaos by Sandro Veronesi came my way when hardly anyone was talking about it yet. To this day, it is the book I have given away most often. While reading the story of a successful businessman who, after the death of his wife, begins to live in his car, I found myself questioning my own happiness and my own life after every chapter, and when I finished the book, the world had shifted slightly.” — Bart Moeyaert (in de Volkskrant, 20-03-2009)

Nicolai Lilin has recently been living in Italy, but belongs to the Urka’s, a criminal Russian community. Remarkably, they see themselves as “decent criminals”. As a reader, you first have to let go of conventional ideas of good and evil, but then you begin to understand what they mean. They regulate their own violence through a strict ethical code and possess a Robin Hood-like sense of justice: fighting against the (corrupt) state and standing up for the needy. The Urka’s have now been driven out to Siberia, the harshest corner of Russia, and are a disappearing people. With his debut Siberische opvoeding, Lilin brings their world back to life.