Valentina Maini was born in Bologna in 1987. She completed her PhD in Comparative Literature between Bologna and Paris and has published short stories in retabloid, TerraNullius, Atti Impuri, Horizonte, and other magazines. Some of her articles have appeared in Poetiche, La Deleuziana, and Classiques Garnier. With her collection of poetry, Casa Rotta (2016), she won the Anna Osti literary prize. She translates from French and from English into Italian.

Synopsis

It’s 2007 and we’re in Bilbao, worn out by the final blows of Basque terrorism. Gorane and Jokin are twenty-five year old twins and children of ETA militants. Raised without rules, they take opposing and complementary directions: compliant and passive to everything, Jokin, a heroin-addict drummer, seems to follow in his parents’ footsteps, while Gorane, ambiguous and introverted, pulls away seeking refuge in an abstract world. When Jokin runs away and their parents become involved in a tragic event, Gorane finds herself prey to strange hallucinations of her parents. Meanwhile in Paris, Jokin struggles with his attraction to the mysterious Germana, yet, despite the distance, the twins’ lives seem destined to never separate and it will be a French writer’s novel that reconnects them.

The Melee is a polyphonic work; a world that connects reality to our most recondite dreams, a world where the only driving force seems to be blind violence. Can freedom reveal itself to be an instrument of torture, and can empathy that resists absolutism prevail in the face of trauma? Valentina Maini responds in the pages of this provocative debut and its web of stories connecting drug dealers, smugglers, psychiatrists, writers, cleaners and fortune tellers - and she does it with the conviction of Roberto Bolaño and Mathias Énard: looking chaos directly in the eye.

First place in the L’Indiscreto Quality Rankings - Classifica di Qualità - L'Indiscreto

Shortlisted for the Severino Cesari Debut Award 2020

Shortlisted for the Fondazione Mondadori Debut Award 2020

Chosen by Kobo in Their 50 Books to Defy and Survive the Year 2020 - View List Here

“What is great European literature today? The Melee by Valentina Maini has the range and complexity to fit the bill and the ambition to be part of it.”

Veronica Raimo (The Girl at the Door)

 “There are writers who, more than make their debut, burst onto the scene. By writing novels that play havoc with all the rules. Valentina Maini is one of them.”

Andrea Bajani (If You Kept a Record of Sins; Every Promise)

“Redolent of Clarice Lispector and Roberto Bolano, a haunted, captivating, poetic novel that tells the story of two children of ETA and their quest for life and the future under the tight rein of a true artist and her unique, visionary freedom of language.”

Marta Barone (Città sommersa)

“In The Melee, Valentina Maini unfurls a notable variety of textual typologies – reports, statements, recordings, a novel within the novel – showing that it is still possible to tell stories in an impressive, original manner.”

Wu Ming 2 (Q; Manituana; 54)

 “(An) important, composite, well-structured work with the pace of a classical 20th-century novel (...) an unexpected surprise if you consider that the author, already a great writer, was only born in 1987.”

Valeria Parrella, Grazia

“This rough, explosive, marvellous novel came out at the end of February. Impossible as it may seem given the structure and the quality of the writing, it marks the author’s debut.”

Francesco Targhetta (Perciò veniamo bene nele fotografie; Le vite potenziali)

“La mischia (The Melee) by Valentina Maini is what one might define as a dazzling debut. This in fact ishe first novel by a young author who, in 2016, published a poetry collection (Casa rotta - Broken Home - Arcipelago Itaca) and followed it up with short stories in a number of magazines. As a novel it’s both ambitious and powerful: it’s rare in contemporary Italian literature to read a book of such narrative and poetic complexity written in such a distinctive andfounder assured style, all the more so if it’s by a writer making her debut in the genre.”

Marco Mongelli (founder of 404: file not found),La Balena Bianca

“Compelling and enigmatic.”

Corriere della Sera, La Lettura

“The Meleeis a moving book [...] a hypnotic novel that has the reader constantly opening their eyes wide with surprise at such an intense, convincing debut.”

Silvia Castellani, Satisfiction

“(...) a veritable contemporary epic as Roberto Bolaño might have conceived it, animated by a style at once shamanic and sartorial, capable of returning heterogeneity to unity.”

Minima et Moralia

“A debut that stands out for its lack of uncertainties and the glittering polyphony on which it’s based.”

Il Giornale di Sicilia

“Though The Meleebelongs to the category of novels that chronicle the life of a family, it is given a peculiarity of its own by the strength of the characters (...) explored with a reflective maturity that, applied to this story in particular, draws out the existential dynamics – small shared truths – that are common to the majority of people.”

Il manifesto, Alias

“Very tight writing, almost furious storytelling.”

Corriere della Sera, Io Donna

“Maini’s powerful, sophisticated debut novel reveals a mature, mindful command of language and storytelling.”

Mangialibri.it

“Apparently ‘out of control’ but actually very controlled indeed in its labyrinthine, sophisticated structure.”

Avvenire

“Can liberty – a fragile and illusory conquest of our time – prove to be an instrument of torture that conceals prisons that we hadn’t predicted? Valentina Maini answers the question through the pages of this amazing debut novel (...) and does so with the same decision as Roberto Bolaño and Mathias Énard: by looking chaos straight in the eye.”

Altritaliani.net

“[Valentina Maini] demonstrates enviable maturity (...) a debut with a bang.”

Il Piccolo di Trieste

“Not for a moment did I think I was reading an author’s first novel.”

CriticaLetteraria.org

“(...) brilliant, weighty writing (...) an Italian novel that crosses national borders to become international, in setting and in style.”

Sulromanzo.it