Attending the ceremony along with Mr. van Straten will be three finalists for the prize - the authors Paola Mastrocola, Romana Petri, and Ugo Riccarelli. Giorgio van Straten was born in 1955 in Florence, where he still resides. The novel is about a Jewish family's journey from its origin in 1811 Rotterdam through San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Odessa, Tbilisi, and Genova, to present-day Florence. It is a novel about memories and the search for one's roots in which we discover how one name can uncover endless interconnected paths. Although it regards literary works written in Italian and published in Italy, the Zerilli-Marim Prize is unique in that it expresses the judgment of a foreign jury.
All jurors are fluent speakers of Italian but of non-European nationality.
Since its opening in 1990, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marim has been a center for Italian culture and civilization in the United States. The Department of Italian at NYU is recognized as one of the leading programs in the country. Specific strengths of the faculty lie in the areas of contemporary culture and society, and medieval and Renaissance studies.