Tirana – Literature, Chiara Gamberale meets the Albanian public

Chiara Gambarale in Tirana: the meeting with the writer is scheduled at 6 p.m. on Thursday, 31 March at the Unesco Hall of the National History Museum of Tirana, where she will present the Albanian translation of her two novels “Per dieci minuti” and “Le luci nelle case degli altri”. The presentation is promoted by the Italian Institute of Culture in partnership with the Toena and Pegi publishing houses. “Per dieci minuti” (“For Ten Minutes”) tells the story of a young 36-year-old woman who thought she had achieved what she had always dreamt of in her life. But what we think does not always coincide with the reality in which we live. Instead “Le luci nelle case degli altri” (“The Lights in Other People’s Homes”) tells the story of Mandorla, the happy child of a single mother full of imagination. Maria, the child’s mother, is a building manager and has the special gift of transforming any homeowners meeting into a touching group therapy session. On a very sad day, Maria dies after falling off her scooter and the homeowners of the building on Via Grotta Perfetta 31C, those that loved her the most, find a letter which says that little Mandorla was conceived precisely in their building. The letter says nothing about who the father could be. Exactly because Maria was capable of establishing an intense bond with everybody she knew, none of the male homeowners could feel free of the others’ suspicion of being Mandorla’s father.