The writer Michela Murgia, considered one of the most prominent intellectuals, feminists and civil rights activists in Italy, has died this Thursday at the age of 51, a victim of cancer that she herself publicly announced in May.
“Goodbye Michela,” wrote the editor Mondadori on social networks, along with a photograph of the smiling writer, one of the many expressions of affection and tributes that have followed one another in recent hours from friends and fans.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Mondadori (@librimondadori)
Murgia, known for her literary talent and many civic struggles, was the victim of kidney cancer that was irreversible when diagnosed.
“You cannot return from the fourth phase,” he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper in May, explaining that he had months to live, according to the Spanish news agency EFE.
In mid-July, she announced her civil marriage with the actor and director Lorenzo Terenzi to guarantee the rights of her partner and what she called her “queer family”, made up of friends and “sons of the soul”.
Of Catholic origin, Murgia was born in Sardinia in 1972 and was a writer, playwright, essayist and columnist, although she had previously worked as a religion teacher and director of a thermoelectric plant, among other jobs.
In 2014, he ran for home region president, without success.
His literary career began in 2006, with the publication of the novel “Il mondo deve sapere”, a tragicomic story about the world of call shops (a service to access long distance calls to countries that do not have them).
The book began as a blog and ended up inspiring a play of the same name and the film “Tutta la vita davanti” in 2008.
“Viaggio in Sardegna” appeared in 2008, two years before “Acabadora”, a play on euthanasia and adoption in the 1950s that earned him public and critical recognition and several awards.
It was followed by “Ave Maria”, a reflection on women and the Church (2011), “L’incontro” (2012), the short essay on femicide “L’ho uccisa perché l’amavo. False!” (2013), “Chiru” (2015) and “Interior Future” (2016).
As her literary career grew, Murgia became an important voice in Italian culture, shaping a different vision to promote gender equality or the fight against fascism.
In an interview with EFE, he said that fascism wins “when it manages to put its words” on everyone’s lips, “not when it reaches the government.”
Announcing the disease, he said: “I only hope to die when Giorgia Meloni is no longer prime minister, because her government is fascist.”
In 2022 she wrote “God Save the Queer”, an essay on one of the topics that touched her the most in the last years of her life.
It was when he made known the “queer family”, made up of the people closest to him and with whom he shared a house on the outskirts of Rome, where he married Terenzi.
One of them was the writer Roberto Saviano, who said goodbye to her on social networks with an emotional message along with a smiling photo of Murgia: “But my love does not die.”
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According to the National Library catalog, Murgia had a work published in Portugal, “Acabadora” (Bertrand, 2012), released in original in 2009 and with which the writer won multiple literary prizes, such as the Dessì, the Campiello and the SuperMondello .
Source: TSF
