Long live booksellers, who every day dive into the vast sea of books and emerge with just the right one for you. Yesterday I met many of them at the Treccani headquarters in Rome, where they had come to hear the director of Gramma Feltrinelli, Giuseppe Russo, speak about exploring the spirit of the times, book by book, through new works on the global scene as well as those waiting to be rediscovered, in which the seeds of the epoch-making upheaval we are currently experiencing are already evident.

And I spoke to all these booksellers (a profession I would have loved to pursue) about my “Aprile è una strana stagione”, a fictionalised biography of an Italian filmmaker who navigated the twentieth century with grace and lightness, a life that was a hymn to freedom and love despite the prejudices and taboos of the century.

“Aprile è una strana stagione” is a book about which the great Colum McCann wrote: “This is a novel of rare grace and quiet defiance – a luminous meditation on love unbound by gender, carried by prose that shimmers with emotional precision. The author doesn’t just tell a story; she composes a kind of music, fluid and fearless, reminding us that language, like love, needs not to be confined.” I am extremely grateful to him.

But now, thank you to all the booksellers who showed curiosity, interest and care for this book last night.

And, as always, thank you to my wonderful agent Giulia De Biase. Giulia loved this book from the very first lines, believed in it wholeheartedly and, with her characteristic confidence, immediately took it by the hand – as only she can – to Gramma Feltrinelli, the finest publishing house I could have hoped for. Thank you, Giulia, for your unconditional and constant support.

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