Pier Vittorio Tondelli - who is this mysterious, melancholic Italian figure?

I was recently browsing the shelves of Foyles Bookshop's first floor, looking for new interesting fiction to read. Since I left the bookshop in 2019, Foyles has changed a lot, but its booksellers have not lost their elegant taste for wonderful literary fiction.

That's where I encountered this name - Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Initially, I thought, maybe an Italian-English writer? But then I found out Tondelli was Italian to the core, from Correggio precisely, a city that produced many talents - think of singer-songwriter Luciano Ligabue.

Pier Vittorio Tondelli, likely 1970s.

Tondelli is new to me despite my years of intensive study of Italian literature - it seems he is not part of study curricula in Italy at all, even though he's considered a crucial, even influential name in contemporary post-modern Italian literature.

I ended up browsing articles that revealed his involvement with the Catholic church from a young age - he often wrote and directed plays for children, as it's customary in active Catholic churches in Italy. But what about the rest? Where is the Tondelli writer, who appears to be so sensual, introspective, daring, and so profoundly misunderstood?

He said about himself, a Virgo born on September 14th, 1955:

« Virgos are like that: a little melancholic, a little autumnal, loners, anal, terrible partners and exceptional singles. They have a great inner life, which doesn't need worldly passions to express itself. At the same time, they are victims of black humour, black bile -- basically, melancholy. »

Tondelli dared to challenge societal norms with books that were not only censored but also reported to the police for indecency in a country that presented a facade of puritanical media. Yet, just looking at his Wikipedia pages and other websites, both in English and Italian, very little of this incredible man's voice and history shines through. I dug further and came across some information in his own words that finally made me see a glimpse of his personality.

From Baskerville.it, the website from publisher Baskerville that himself Tondelli founded along with his friends:

«I'm 16 and I'm sick. I said it many times that I'm sick, I've grown up with that phrase, I've always known the reasons for my sickness, it was all perfectly clear in my small 16-year-old head. My faggot love, the awareness of being an artist, of wanting to do, writing, poeting, etc. I wanted to make films».

That's when I understood I wanted to read more about Tondelli. He did not care to chose clean words to express his past, and his bravery laid not just in his extraordinary explorative writing - which, by the way, didn't just cover homosexuality - but also in his unsanitised depiction of 80s Italy and the fresh, decaying youngsters' scene of those years, made of AIDS, death, heroin, freedom, and a desperate search for poetry in all-things-life.

I found Altri Libertini, and the history of this book is a statement of its content. Released in 1980, it won't see the light of day until one year later, as local police banned it from circulation -- locals complained and reported its vulgar, offensive contents. But by then, it was already a cult book venerated by a whole generation of young readers who fell through the cracks of the broken Italian system.

Both the author and the publisher came clean after the trial, and the book regained pace in younger communities.

Altri Libertini is what Tondelli called "romanzo a scene", a novel split into scenes. The stories, six in total, all move around a local hangout spot for youngsters, a bar inside a station in 70s Reggio Emilia. These stories feel like vivacious paintings that depict scenes from forgotten youth: drunken nights, dreams, suburbs, vomit, and passionate sex. This is a book coming from a dreamer who is involved with life in all its aspects, and has a knack for writing about marginalised lives in the vortex that was the 1970s. Tondelli doesn't hide anything; he is candid and says the truth about his experience of homosexuality. His characters are completely themselves, and it feels like the author knows those people by heart, repeating their language exactly as it was: full of swearwords, dialect varieties, and foreign expressions -- a language that is erotic and pushed beyond boundaries. I perceived this book as a big smoke puff in the face of authority, a real scream from the heart of a child who's experiencing the world alone, and is left alone to feel his misunderstood pain and pick up the pieces.

A recent edition of Separate Rooms, Hodder & Stoughton UK edition.

Zando cover for the Separate Room US edition.

And then, this book. Camere Separate - Separate Rooms in English, published by Hodder and Stoughton - I picked it from the shelves as the cover left a strong impression on me. I have to say, I was attracted by the striking, flashy colours, which evoke homoerotic themes with an 80s glamorous flair. I loved the US cover version in particular, which I prefer to the UK one as I feel it shows the core of the book: the eros-thanatos relation that will unfold slowly as the author tells us about a passionate love story that eventually ends in tragedy.

Separate Rooms is different from Altri Libertini - it's mature, yet again delving into themes that show how avant-garde Tondelli was, way ahead of his time, published a couple of years before his demise -- a premonition of his death from AIDS.

As for other works by this formidable author, I recommend keeping your eyes peeled for Sceptre's edition Rimini, landing on the shelves in 2026 - a slice of life autobiographical novel set in the iconic Italian city, depicted through the eyes of Tondelli. Rimini is generally associated with hot summers and a vivacious dancing scene, but Tondelli takes a sharp detour from mainstream narratives. He talks about the lives of young people who are struggling to keep up with their growth in the ever-changing and ever-challenging background of 80s Italy, tackling the themes of sexual discovery and self-exploration, a coming-of-age tale that will make you see Italian youth as you've never seen it before. Sadly, this book remains censored in its Italian Bompiani edition, the prestigious Italian publisher - shame! Will we be able to read the words of this extraordinary voice as they are in this upcoming English edition, at last?