Marcello Fois
The Sardinian novelist and poet
Born in Nuoro in 1960, Marcello Fois, earned the Degree in Italian Studies - the study of the Italian language and culture – at the University of Bologna, the town where now he lives.
Through his novels production, he established himself as a writer of a specific genre, such that he is considered "one of the most pleasant authors of the Italian noir narrative".
He debuted through the novel Picta, thanks to which he won the Italo Calvino Award, and Recent Iron, whose title refers to the last of five phases of Nuraghe Civilization.
This is a front rank novel in the proof of the voluntary resistance of the people’s and usual culture, compared to the degenerating modernity.
It is a work characterized by the concreteness with which Marcello Fois uses the noir’s techniques and rhythms for telling about a generation tha, in the end, betrays itself; and for telling about a "story of terrorism in Sardinia, in Nuoro", the city to which the work is dedicated.
An essential element in the Marcello Fois’ works, such as in the works of all the Sardinian novelists, is the place: the so-called Sardinian Nation, which does not find in the tale a symbolic nature of political independentism, but instead, it represents a particularity of identity, "a geographic datum, the certainty of a start point, the biographical certification" – as defined by the author himself in Interview to Marcello Fois (M.Marras, 2009, p.182) – is the original place useful for specifying the identification of yourself and the relationship with other people.
So, results an action of identity resistance, addressed to the cultural sharing. In 1998 there was the publication of the noir trilogy – Always dear, Blood from the sky, The other world – where the protagonist is a lawyer of Nuoro, Bustianu, inspired to the real poet of Nuoro, Sebastiano Satta.
The author showed his rich talent in various field, not only literary, through the publication of lots of works, but also in television, theatre and radio too.
The most well-known novels by Marcello Fois, among which Nothing, Drummers, Ancestry, Memory of empty and In the time of the middle, marked the narrative history of the Sardinian novelist who stays among the representatives of the new Sardinian Literature.