Italian author Donatella Di Pietrantonio, winner of the prestigious 2024 Strega Prize, is visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina for the first time as part of the Italian Language Week. During her appearance on N1, she highlighted Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon, stating that he has "best expressed the feeling of exile" in his literary work.

Di Pietrantonio, whose novels have been translated into over thirty languages and who is regarded as one of Italy's most widely-read contemporary authors, with her work L'Arminuta adapted into a film, reflected on the historical ties between Italy and Bosnia and Herzegovina during her first visit to Sarajevo. She specifically emphasized the war memories and the emotional connection Italians had with the Siege of Sarajevo.

“Italians went through a specific experience that closely connected us with Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely the war, and particularly the Siege of Sarajevo. For us, people of my generation, and I’m 62 years old, that war was, in a way, our war. It was the closest war, not only geographically, but emotionally as well”, she shared with N1.

She added that Italians followed the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina with a deep sense of anxiety, reading about it in newspapers and watching televised reports.

“My excitement yesterday, upon landing in Sarajevo, was largely connected to passing through what we still call Sniper Alley. This is the city I used to watch from afar, looking for signs, signs that I sought out and now, today, finally recognize”, Di Pietrantonio said.

During her appearance on Izvan okvira, Di Pietrantonio also touched on the universal themes of exile and the loss of a sense of belonging, recurring subjects in her works. She then highlighted Bosnian author Aleksandar Hemon as one of the most skilled writers in capturing those feelings in literature.

“Hemon is one of the writers who has best expressed the feeling of exile”, said Di Pietrantonio, adding:

“Exile, I think, is that state in which we no longer belong to the place we were born, yet we haven’t fully been accepted in the new place we live. Perhaps that means we may never fully belong, neither to what was before, nor to what is now. Hemon, in my view, has conveyed these feelings like few others”, said the Italian novelist.

Di Pietrantonio explores themes of identity, loss, and familial relationships in her most famous novels, including L'Arminuta and Borgo Sud. Through stories of family separations and returns, she delves into the complex emotional connections and the changes those experiences bring. Her novel L'Arminuta, which won the Campiello Prize, deals with the experience of readjustment and the sense of losing one’s roots.