Giulia Corsalini: “The Chekhov Reader” – from janitor to university lecturer

It’s a strange landing that takes Nina. A process of internal disintegration is leading the forty-year-old literary scholar from Kiev to drift further away from her original life and into oblivion.

She came to Italy as a nurse for the elderly, supported her family with money, looked after diabetics, then took a teaching position at the College of Slavic Studies in Macerata and cleaned a supermarket every day, where she stayed in a storeroom. Despite the adverse circumstances, Italy granted her completely new liberties: she wrote an essay on Anton Chekhov and found solace in reflection.

Giulia Corsalini, herself an experienced university lecturer in Recanati, tells in her brilliant debut “Chekhov’s Readers” about a woman on the edge of a precipice. In return, she gives to her earthly hero herself: Nina describes accurately and in a focused way from retrospect how she conducted her first stay in the small town of Macerata and then returned to Italy eight years later to attend a conference.

Once again things get away from her, and again she doesn’t do what she actually wanted to do. Almost like a character from the fairy tales of Anton Chekhov.

Without a trace of pity, Corsalini turns to a highly charged topic: immigration. Immigration narratives are a real phenomenon especially in Italy, which was just a country of immigration about 25 years ago.

Often these are exciting experience reports that rely on identification and have little will to configure. With Corsalini, it’s the opposite: only the plot is hinted at, the characters are multi-layered, the feelings are complex and difficult to decipher. It is the atmosphere of rounding that captivates the first line.

At the same time, the author succeeds in conveying the universe of a small town as vividly as the indignities of the caregiver from Eastern Europe. Corsalini looks unemotionally at the social conditions in Italy, where the new class society established itself long ago.

With intimate realism, the writer is not limited to this aspect, but also creates a study of a dazzling female portrait. Nina struggles with her relationships. She left her husband dying, feeling alienated from her daughter, and could not form a closer relationship with Professor of Slavic Studies De Felice. Above all lies the gloomy mood lost in Tschechowischen’s stories.

The impressive debut of Giulia Corsalini, which won several awards in Italy, was published in German by Nonsolo. The small house of Freiburg repeatedly attracts attention with surprising discoveries: after the Neapolitan Nicola Polisi and the Afro-Italian Ijiaba Sego, Corsalini also conveys a different view of Italy, away from the fishermen of Capri, the Mafia and the sound of the sea.