Mauro Covacich: the shape of what eludes us

Mauro Covacich | The Shape of What Eludes Us Beyond the Wall Saturday, 10 October 2026 | 3:30 p.m. | Piazza del Sole, Bellinzona

How much of what we experience can truly become part of a story? And what happens when writing tries to draw closer to experience, to the body, to impulses, to everything within us that resists a complete explanation?

Starting from his latest novel, Lina e il sasso (La nave di Teseo, 2026), Mauro Covacich reflects on the relationship between life and narrative, between what happens and the form we can attempt to give it.

At the heart of the novel is Lina, a luminous and mysterious child capable of unsettling the adult world. Around her unfolds a story shaped by affection, desire, hope and vulnerability.

In Covacich’s work as a writer and performer, the literary word never fully exhausts experience: it draws close to it, questions it, retains some of its traces, while leaving a space of opacity intact.

This gives rise to a central question for the theme of this edition: what place does silence occupy in the creative act of writing? And what can other forms of expression – theatre, voice, stage presence – give back when narrative reaches its limits?

A conversation about writing as an act of approaching: not a definitive answer, but a way of staying alongside what eludes us, where narrative recognises its own limits and, precisely for this reason, continues to search for a form.

The talk will be moderated by Roberto Falconi, literary critic.

Mauro Covacich is a writer and performer. He has published novels, short stories and essays, including A perdifiato (Mondadori, 2003), A nome tuo (Einaudi, 2011), La sposa (Bompiani, 2014), shortlisted for the Premio Strega, La città interiore (La nave di Teseo, 2017), shortlisted for the Premio Campiello, and Di chi è questo cuore (La nave di Teseo, 2019).

Some of his texts have been brought to the stage by the author himself, in a practice that intertwines writing, the body and performance. His most recent publications include L’avventura terrestre (2023), Kafka (2024) and Lina e il sasso (2026), all published by La nave di Teseo.