“Il coraggio è femmina” by Zaira Sellerio to be released in September
The author, recipient of several awards for her works, including the International Donne d’amore Award offers her new novel, which can already be pre-ordered.
Zaira Sellerio, is a Sicilian-born Italian writer and poet who moved to Switzerland with her family at the age of 11. Since her youth, she has cultivated a deep passion for literature and poetry. Her life was marked by a marriage imposed by her family when she was only 16 years old.
The author has received several awards for her works, including prestigious prizes such as the International Donne d’Amore Award. Her literary merits have also been recognized by Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who lauded her contribution.
Note from the author
Dear fellow readers, everything happens for a reason….
Throughout life, each of us seeks love. True and pure love, I got it from my grandmother, without limits and without interests. After years, I found it in my children and my two grandchildren. The love of a man, maybe I had it, maybe not — who knows — it is certain that I loved a lot.
I would never have set out to write if I had not felt love inside. Like Dante for his Beatrice, like Paolo and Francesca, like the lovers of Verona, Juliet and Romeo, Tristan and Isolde, etc. Characters who marked the greatest love stories of our past.
My Romeo was a liar, unstable, unreliable and self-centered. A person whose attitude placed himself at the center of every situation. This made first Him and later the people close to him suffer. I, unfortunately, ended up in his gear!
Today I can say that I have treasured all the experiences I have had in my life. In the novel you will read, there are some truths and also some funny fictionalized situations. Life is a shade of colors, sometimes gray, sometimes pink. Of course I paid dearly for a signature on the register, I was 16 years old! Too young to understand, too young to rebel. I decided to live every day: in a dream, in a novel, possibly without a mask.
Zaira Sellerio.
Preface
When the writer, and friend, Zaira proposed to me to produce a preface to this book, I immediately understood her need to be heard, understood, guided.A woman from the South, from a South that still retains – unfortunately – contradictions and sufferings, sometimes incomprehensible, of an archaic and patriarchal way of thinking, Zaira writes what is, to all intents and purposes, a reliable testimony to the hardships and limitations that being female has entailed over the past decades. Having emigrated to Switzerland, a homeland that received her coldly, but at the same time was able to give her the courage and motivational drive to rebel against family impositions, Zaira understood the meaning of freedom and independence by facing her personal battle with determination and tenacity, to the point of recounting in this text the autobiographical passages that can be well interpreted behind the story of the protagonist, Giulia Maniscalchi.
A lived experience that highlighted moments of discouragement, weakness and depression, but also of strength, reaction and rebirth, because she – a Sicilian woman with a heart imbued with passion and feeling – understood over time that she could be an example, an inspiration, a point of reference for all those women who do not have a voice and who do not find the courage to rebel against the “master father and husband” man, who suffer helplessly all forms of violence, physical and psychological, who submit to rules handed down through the centuries and who risk tearing their existence apart, even to the point of death, in order to go along with what are the unwritten laws of the fierce and cruel patriarchy. Zaira Sellerio wins her personal battle and shows everyone that change is possible, that there is a different life, made up of freedom and happy moments, independent choices and small and great achievements, which every woman deserves to try and savor. Her book should be read, understood, loved and appreciated, because it does not involve any scheme of persuasion: reality told as it is, fragility and the pure instinct of a woman, capable of regenerating herself and blossoming into new life, are the great virtues of a work of high educational, social and existential value. Happy Reading.
Francesco Iervolino – Journalist
The printed book, currently available only in Italian, can be pre-ordered with exclusive dedication and autograph by the author.
To place your order, send an email with your details to: zairasellerio@sunrise.ch
