‘Claudia Durastanti’

The young Italian author Claudia Durastanti has written a beautiful book that will be published in English next year. In the autobiographical novel The Stranger, she describes her youth as the child of deaf parents. Durastanti, who was born in New York but moved to rural Italy at the age of six, discusses what it was like to grow up with no language, and yet among several languages. The Stranger is a moving, intelligent reflection on loneliness, social opportunities and deafening music.     

As well as an author, Durastanti is also a translator (of Ocean Vuong and others), founder of an Italian literature festival in London and a music reviewer specialising in punk and noise. Plenty of reasons to invite her to BOZAR, where she will be interviewed by literature journalist Marnix Verplancke.