Macaco - A novel by Simone Torino

Saturday, April 4, 2026 - 5:00 PM at Parnaso del Rosa, Staffa - Macugnaga

Presentation of the book, winner of the 2024 Calvino Prize and the 2025 Luigi Russo Pozzale Prize , in the presence of the author, with a reading aloud of some of its excerpts.


Three friends and a potato field. All around, the Aosta Valley. This stunning novel transports us into Macaco’s universe: friendship, nature, doing, the meaning of each day.

Macaco lives alone, chats with his cats, and can’t forget the woman he loved. With Bestemmia and Zitto, his "hard-core friends," he turns the earth by hand in the hard soil of the Aosta Valley. On Sundays, when the earth rests, he wanders from potato fields to basketball courts. "You don’t confuse words, you confuse life," someone tells him. And to make things less confusing, Macaco begins to tell his story. With a living language that moves us and makes us laugh in the same turn of phrase. His thoughts get to the heart of things, moving, revealing, engaging. Because they come from his unique mind and are set in a peasant epic that is as candid, contemporary, cruel, and powerful as life itself.

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