Matteo Bussola

novelist and illustrator

Matteo Bussola (Verona, 1971) is a writer, illustrator, and radio host.

He has published the bestseller "Sleepless Nights, Breakfast Kisses" (2016) for Einaudi Stile Libero, translated into many countries, "Their Dreams are Pure" (2017), "Life Until You" (2018), "The Invention of Us Two" (2020), "Time to Go Home" (2021), and "Rosemary Doesn't Understand Winter" (2022). For Salani, he has also published the children's books "Viola and the Blue" (2021) and "Mezzamela" (2023). He hosts a radio show on Radio 24 called "You Don't Understand Me" and writes a weekly column for "F" titled "A Writer, a Woman."

After the tremendous success of "Rosemary Doesn't Understand Winter," Matteo Bussola presents his new, moving novel.

"A good place to stop'' is a book about men dancing while the world screams at them to fight. It's a tale of warriors who choose to lay down their weapons or use them to carve furrows in the earth and sow instead of hurt.

'Sometimes life hits us until we fall. And what if, instead of getting back up, we tried to see the world through the eyes of someone on the ground? Perhaps surrendering can offer unexpected happiness.'

Few have been able to narrate male vulnerability without stereotypes, without prejudices, without shame. Matteo Bussola does it with candor and humanity. In these poignant yet luminous pages, a man finds the courage to desert his own existence and build a dream. A father in neuropsychiatry learns to embrace the wound of bringing a child into the world. An elderly husband, taking care of his wife with Alzheimer's, wonders what remains of a relationship when the one we love disappears, even if we can still touch them. A hikikomori who fell in love online wishes to meet the person who became so important to him, but the fear of going out imprisons him. An obedient child discovers the unexpected beauty of disappointing expectations.

Cracked, bent, defeated, yet capable of seeking meaning, glimpsing it where they never would have believed, these protagonists each find a personal, authentic, shamelessly honest way to answer the question: 'What makes a man a man?'".

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Events IJF 2024

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