“Brianza is an area that is strongly production-driven. But what happens if a person doesn’t want to be driven? Is it possible to flee from the reality that is shaping you? Greta Pavan’s novel confronts us with the fundamental question: who are you? And above all: who do you think you are?”
——Enzo Fileno Carabba

“As if in a coming together of the minimalist and ruthlessly refined voices of Fleur Jaeggy and Christina Stead, in Quasi niente sbagliato Greta Pavan has come up with a Bildungsroman of acid maturity which, with chronological rigour, traces the cruel concept of growth. The life is that of Margherita who – in the heart of a harsh, incorruptible Brianza – attempts to draw dreamlike emotions against the rowdy suffering of an existence filled with rough materialism, distant, alas, from the levity of superstitions and pure sentiments.”
——Orazio Labbate

★Special mention at the Calvino Awards 2022!

The book tells the story of Margherita, born in 1990 into a Venetian family that emigrated to the Brianza area in the Lombardy region at the end of the 1950s. Margherita is ill at ease in the Milanese hinterland: the warehouses, the shopping centres and the monotony of the Lombard plain are, for her, a listless and depressing landscape. In her family, maniacal and religious devotion to work appear to be the only accepted parameter for self-definition. Margherita is often made to feel inadequate, too insecure and too impractical. As a young girl she dreams of being a journalist and eventually moves to Milan. Will her new experiences open new doors for a personal accomplishment as dreamed of as it is out of range?

An original narrative construction, a distinctive outlook and a mature prose style make the author of this excellent novel one of the rising stars of contemporary Italian narrative.

Greta Pavan was born in Desio, in the Brianza area, in 1989 and lives in Milan. She is a graduate of the three-year degree course in Intercultural Communication at the University of Turin and took a diploma in publishing at the Belleville Writing School. She works as a freelance author and editor. In 2021 she was a finalist in the “Oltre il velo del reale” call with her short story Ona storia briansö (A Brianza Story).