From a Russian Orphanage to a Sicilian Adoptive Family: Dasvidania – A Book Presentation in Conversation with the Author Nikolai Prestia (May 29, 2022)

Join us for “From a Russian Orphanage to a Sicilian Adoptive Family,” a presentation of the novel Dasvidania (2021) in conversation with the author Nikolai Prestia.

Online event on Sunday May 29 at 2:30pm ET (20:30 in Italy). In Italian with simultaneous interpretation into English.

Trans-national adoption constitutes a complex form of migration at once geographical, cultural, and psycho-emotional. Dasvidania is an autobiographical book that sheds light on the experiences of a Russian boy grappling with the question of belonging, even before moving from Russia to Italy in the late 1990s. Kola/Nikolai lucidly and inventively addresses the harrowing baggage of his family of origin, his hard and yet formative years in the orphanage system, and the exhilarating and also frightening prospect of moving to a new family, language and, ultimately, life. Prestia’s realistic and poetic writing gives voice to the importance of excavating the past in order to design a future, despite the challenges they both entail.

For more information, see flyer below and webpage. RSVP here.