Melania Mazzucco on Art, Writing, and Her Novel 'L'architettrice'

In an interview for Spazio Taverna, Italian writer Melania Mazzucco discusses her creative process, her novel 'L'architettrice' (Einaudi, 2021), and her relationship with art and places. She describes her method of starting from material objects—photographs, glasses, postcards—as traces of lost lives, leading to research akin to a crime investigation. Her novel focuses on Plautilla Briccia, the first female architect in history, whose biography she discovered in an 18th-century dictionary. Mazzucco emphasizes the importance of 'genius loci' in her work, with Rome featuring in five of her books as a protagonist. She views the past as present, with metamorphosis as the key to the universe, and rejects nostalgia. For aspiring writers, she advises patience, humility, and the choice of the narrow, steep path over the easy one. She sees sacredness in all matter, from human to inorganic, and opposes the dematerialization of life and art. Her guiding ideas are movement, freedom, equality, and the endiadic 'nature and culture'. The interview is part of the 'Futuro Antico' series by Ludovico Pratesi, published on Artribune.