Game Plan for a Novel

"Game Plan for a Novel" (Lettera all'editore) follows a group of men and women working their way through life, love and relationships as a game of cards keeps bringing them together. But Manzini is really about the game of fiction. An author's letter to her editor explains the development of an idea. It reveals the game plan for her work: how the characters appear in her imagination, how they resemble people she knows - or how they resemble her - and how she will manipulate them, her memories and her feelings to turn them all into fiction. Gianna Manzini is considered one of the most accomplished writers in Italy, praised by important literary critics and writers, and widely known by Italian readers. She belongs to that same illustrious "society of writers" as Pavese, Brancati, Moravia, Pasolini, Pratolini, Gadda, Soldati and Buzzati. With the appearance of her first novel, Tempo innamorato, narrative in Italy began to undergo "an experiment of lyrical expression." Manzini's first novel in English translation introduces readers to a writer perfecting her prose, sharpening her powers of observation and interacting with her characters. Manzini's art is "the means for seeking the life behind life." Gianna Manzini's fiction been compared to that of Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, and Paul Valéry.