Women of all ages and from different social backgrounds are the protagonists of this series of short stories in which the pleasure of narration is deliberately blocked, in a gesture of self-censorship, through an ever-watchful irony that refrains from making statements in order to allude, inviting the reader to invent one of the possible conclusions that each of the stories leaves open.

Gabriella Rovagnati, Germanist and literary translator, lives and works in Milan.

• Short stories. Villanova di Guidonia (RM): Aletti 2018

In everyone's life, there are moments when the course of events unexpectedly takes a new direction, inviting or forcing those involved to make different decisions from those previously planned, if not actually planned. Developments of this kind are the leitmotif of this series of short stories, in which the characters are all more or less surprised by events that, for better or worse, give their existence an unexpected twist, surprising them, destabilising them or making them realise traits of their personality of which they were previously unaware, depending on the case

• Tales. Villanova di Guidonia (RM): Aletti 2019

The lucubrations of a university professor are at the centre of a story in which, in fact, nothing happens. Sitting in front of a mug of beer in a dingy bar in Brno, Moravia, the protagonist, a middle-aged Viennese man, tries to explain to himself what happened to him the previous evening, when, after a life of absolute solitude and draconian moral rigour, all lived in the memory of a great love of his youth, he succumbed for a moment to the charms of a slut. The episode gives him the opportunity to review his own life. But, as the title of the book inverting a well-known proverb says, "it is no use trying": the professor can no longer give a different turn to an existence entirely dedicated to literature and the cult of beauty.

The sudden and tragic death of her ten-year-old nephew leads the protagonist to reflect on her own role within her family of origin, whose dynamics and subtle games of slaughter she lucidly analyses. She thus bitterly discovers that she has never been loved by her two sisters, who, citing idealistic motives that in fact conceal envy and economic reasons, close all relations with her and their mother. Astonished and powerless, the woman thus witnesses the break-up of a traditional family, to which she regrets having devoted many hours of her life.

• Novel. Milan: Mimesis 2022

It is not so much the death of the mother, expected and almost hoped for after a long, devastating illness, that upsets the equilibrium of a traditional family, as the turn of events after her funeral, when the widower, an austere high school mathematics professor, resumes dating a former colleague and officially introduces her into the circle of relatives. It is the eldest son who analyses the reactions of relatives and acquaintances in the mountain village that forms the backdrop to the story, in the face of his father's metamorphosis. He thus has the opportunity to reflect on the character of some of his fellow villagers and on that of his family of origin, from which he now lives far away: he outlines the characters of his old aunt, his two sisters and the members of their respective families, and last but not least, that of his younger brother, with whom he is bound by a complicity based on a spontaneous elective affinity rather than on a true confidence. However, as life is always more surprising than all our intentions, even the elderly father's plans collapse in the face of a series of coincidences that push the destinies of all the characters in an unforeseen direction.

• Novel. Milan:Mimemis 2023. Finalist for the Giovanni Bertacchi Prize 2024
• ISBN 979-12-2230-402-1