Presentation of the anthology "Sanatorium," Camena editions 2025. Literary premiere in collaboration with the 7th edition of Cedac's Reading Promotion Project Leggerezza. Presented and in dialogue with the authors are editors Stefano Obino and Andrea Fulgheri.
SANATORIUM VILLA CLARA.
AA.VV.
In 1978, the Basaglia law mandated the closure of all psychiatric hospitals. And all of them, indeed, closed. All but one. Villa Clara, in Cagliari, remained in operation until 1998. Ishmael is one of the former patients who populated the facility for decades, a helmsman charged with transporting eleven souls, and their stories, beyond the confines of madness. Eleven, like the major arcana that empowers change. Eleven, like the patients who decided to tell their lives, or their deaths, or their nonlives. Eleven as the first palindromic number, reminding us that insane and sane are two profiles of the same face.
Sanatorium Villa Clara is the first anthology of short stories from the Cagliari Academy of Art. Eleven stories were selected by the Publishing House to show the different shades of madness. A literary framework, a tale within tales, has been included within the volume to establish order in the psychiatric disorder that Villa Clara has nurtured for so many decades.