The “Nonino Prize Forty-fifth Year + Two 2022” to the English writer David Almond

The “Nonino International Prize” to the English writer David Almond, one of the most famous authors in the world of children’s literature, the “Nonino Prize - Masters of our time” to Nancy Fraser, American philosopher and feminist theorist, and Mauro Ceruti, Italian philosopher and politician, and the “Nonino Risit d’Aur Prize - Barbatella d’oro” to Cultural Foster Care, the project of contrast to juvenile educational poverty: here are the winners of the “Nonino Prize Forty-fifth Year + Two”, edition 2022 of the prestigious award, among the most important and long-lived of Italy, pioneeringly established in 1975 by the Nonino family to save the ancient autochthonous vines of Friuli in danger of extinction and for the valorization of the peasant civilization, and assigned to the most important personalities in the cultural, literary and wine and food field, succeeding in anticipating for six times the Nobel Prizes.
And that, after two years of stop due to the pandemic, on May 7th returns in the traditional award ceremony at the Distillerie Nonino in Ronchi di Percoto, marking also the beginning of the celebrations for the One Hundred and Twenty-Five Years in Distillation of the historical Nonino family, today led by Benito and “Our Lady of Grappa” (as the writer and journalist Gianni Brera called her, editor’s note) Giannola Nonino, with her daughters Cristina, Elisabetta and Antonella, and with the latest generation represented by Francesca Bardelli Nonno.
From the pacifist leader, exponent of the movement for the liberation of the Indios of Guatemala, Rigoberta Menchù, “Special Nonino Prize” in 1988 and Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992, to V.S. Naipaul, among the greatest writers of the 20th century, Trinidadian naturalized British, “Nonino International Prize” in 1993 and Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001; from the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, a fundamental voice of the literary world translated into 49 languages, “Nonino International Prize” in 2004 and Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011, to Mo Yan, among the Chinese writers best known and translated abroad, “Nonino International Prize” the following year, in 2005, and Nobel Prize for Literature again the following year, in 2012; from Peter Higgs, the British physicist “father” of the boson that bears his name and that revolutionized the modern theories on particles, “Nonino Prize - A master of our time” in 2013 and, the same year, Nobel Prize for Physics, to the world famous theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi, “Nonino Prize - A master of our time” in 2005 and last Italian to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2021: these are the times in which the “Nonino Prize” has managed to anticipate the choices of the Nobel Prizes. And David Almond, in 2010, won the “Hans Christian Andersen Award”, the Nobel Prize for children’s literature.
“A writer's talent is a gift from the gods, but the talent to write for children and be understood and appreciated by them is a double gift. David Almond is one of those - rare - doubly gifted writers. His classic novel for young people, “Skellig” (Salani), has been translated into forty languages, has been adapted for theater, radio, and the screen. There is even an opera based on it. But today we want to mention above all his latest novel, “The War is Over”, a very moving tale set during what was called the Great War - World War I. The central character, John, can’t understand how, being a child, he can be “at war”, as his teacher assures him. John’s father is fighting in the trenches and his mother works in a munitions factory. One day, John meets a child like him, only Jan is German. It's a very moving story, with added pathos in these days when we see the terrified eyes of the children of Ukraine on our television screens every night. Yet “The War is Over” is full of hope for a future where children like John will still grow up wondering: how can I be at war with my fellow man? As David Almond has said, “When I write stories, I feel a connection to the very young, who will build a better tomorrow”. “The stories of David Almond together form a thread of hope” is the motivation of the “International Nonino Prize 2022” assigned to the English writer, by the prestigious jury of the Nonino Prize, chaired by the Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and composed by the Syrian poet Adonis, the Palestinian architect Suad Amiry, the Irish writer John Banville, the English director Peter Brook, the Italian architect Luca Cendali, the French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, the English scientist James Lovelock, the Italian writer Claudio Magris, the Romanian writer Norman Manea and the French sociologist Edgar Morin (one of the greatest of our time, who wanted the Nonino family at his side in the celebrations for his 100th birthday at the Elysée Palace, in Paris, in the presence of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, in July 2021, editor’s note).
The jury that awarded the “Nonino Prize - Masters of Our Time 2022” to the American thinker Nancy Fraser because “her non-conformist thinking is even more precious in a conformist world. In addition to her important contributions to the theme of “recognition”, Nancy Fraser addresses issues of injustice, particularly the structural injustices that pervade our society and align with social divisions such as gender, race/ethnicity, and class. As a critical theorist, she analyzes such injustices, reveals their root causes, and suggests how they might be remedied. To be a feminist, in her words, is simply “to assume that gender injustices exist and are pervasive and structurally grounded; that they are “wrong”; and that in principle they can be overcome”. And to Mauro Ceruti, about whom “so many things could and should be said about him and his work, for the incredible variety and richness of his research, which takes to the throat the problems, contradictions, cultural enrichment and devastation of our lives, of the whole world. Ceruti makes us feel how each of us is faced with a bewildering universality of things, of forces, of realities that enrich stun and frighten; reading his books is like discovering that the apparent simplicity of the things around us and of all the usual reality is as big and complex as the universe. His books help us not only to know the small and large infinity in which we flounder but also not to fear it, to feel its enrichment for our person. From this feeling and concept of cosmic complexity derives a profoundly humanistic, or rather human, sense of the community of destiny that, as Ceruti writes, binds all individuals of all peoples of the earth to the global ecosystem”.
The “Premio Nonino Risit d’Aur - Barbatella d’oro 2022” goes to Cultural Foster Care, because “to entrust in its etymology means to guard, to watch and then to give back one's faith and knowledge. And so it is for Cultural Foster Care, a project selected by the social enterprise Con I Bambini, as part of the Fund to combat educational poverty among minors; it started in the city of Naples and proposes to mobilize, against educational poverty, “resource families”, enhancing the experience of family foster care, but declining it on the specifics of the use of cultural products and services. The basic idea is very simple. A parent who habitually takes his or her children to the cinema, the theater, a museum, or a bookstore can also take a child - possibly with a member of the child's family - who would not enter these places for different reasons. To date, the project is active in seven Italian cities: in addition to Naples, Rome, Bari, Modena, Milan, Teramo and Cagliari”.