Lunigiana #11 (English)

Premio Bancarella, Bancarella prize, is one of the most prominent literally awards in Italy, was estabilished in 1953, in Mulazzo, Medieval hamlet, that host Dante banished from Firenze (1301-04).

Ernst Hemingway was the first writer awarded.

Why this name? Bancarella, ‘stall’.

Because Bancarella prize originates from a centenarian tradition of book production and selling.

The connection between Lunigiana and books originates with the invention of printing itself.

Fivizzano, was in fact a center of early printing; here, Jacopo da Fivizzano estabilished his print shop in 1472.

(source Museo della Stampa)

During the XIX century people from Lunigiana started immigrating, going in Barsana, not a specific place, as someone might think, but a dialectal expression for ‘immigration’. Barsan were called peddlers, lunigianese teenagers (they normally started right after elementary school, 10-11 y.o.) walk walked around bringing a cesta, a basket, selling soap and razor blades;

the luckiest ones had a bike,

and, when business grew, they could afford a cart and start selling linen and clothes.

(source: the beautiful book by Adriana Dadà on Barsane, available in pdf)

Barsan from northern Lunigiana, especially the Pontremoli area, Montereggio, Parana, Pozzo, Mulazzo, Busatica, Filattiera, Bratto, gradually specialized in book selling.

In 1952, journalist Oriana Fallaci, witnessing the birth of the first edition of Bancarella award, wrote about Bancarellai, book sellers: “They were not familiar with the alphabet, but they ‘felt’ what book to pick up, with a sort of sixth sense”. Almanacs, popular books such as “The Three Musketeers”, preyer books, Italian classics, such as Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, they learn to recite out loud to attract potential customers.

At the end of XIX century several pontremolesi book sellers had already put together a little fortune. Their sons opened stores and even founded publishing houses. Many books stores in Northern Italy were funded and are still run by pontremolesi.

On August 1952 sixty librai, book sellers, met in Mulazzo and there established a literary prize, the only one entirely run by book sellers.

The following year they awarded The old man and the sea, anticipating the decision of the Nobel Prize committee (with the literary sixth sense described by Fallaci).

From Mulazzo and its Torre di Dante, Dante’s tower, the Premio Bancarella moved to Pontremoli, in the Piazza in front of the Cacciaguerra Tower, that this yeat hosts its 54th edition.

(source Il Tirreno)