Friday, May 24, at 5:00 PM, Corrado Augias, author of La vita s'impara, published by Einaudi and available in bookstores for just over a week, will be at GO!

Admission is free and no reservation is required.

The book:

At almost ninety years old, Corrado Augias is a valuable witness to change. Today’s Italy—excluding its eternal national flaws—bears little resemblance to that of the past. Augias recounts his childhood spent in Libya following his father, an officer in the Royal Air Force; the war and bombings; the nightmare of a fierce and grim occupation; his years in a Catholic boarding school, even though he now confesses to being an atheist. Then follows his professional life: journalism, books, and the fortunate circumstances that made him a participant in three significant events in the country's cultural life: the creation of the Central Directorate of Cultural Programs at Rai; the founding of the newspaper la Repubblica in 1976; and the revitalization of RaiTre in 1987. He invented several successful TV programs, from Telefono giallo to Babele, from Città segrete to his most recent creation, La gioia della musica, the last program he devised for Rai before moving to La7 with another successful cultural program: La Torre di Babele. These events are only the public part of a journey that has a more interesting intimate component: a long apprenticeship to a mature intellectual dimension. Alongside the events that marked his life, Augias shares the readings that nurtured him and from which he "learned to live." From Titus Lucretius Carus to Renan, from Feuerbach to Freud, then Spinoza, Manzoni, Beethoven, Nietzsche, and Leopardi, his mentors are thinkers, poets, narrators, and musicians—a broad constellation he does not hesitate to call his pantheon, figures who enriched his professional path and, together, his awareness as a citizen.

The author:

Corrado Augias, journalist, writer, and author of cultural programs for TV, was born in Rome. His numerous books have been translated into major languages. Among others, we remember: I segreti di New York, I segreti di Londra, I segreti di Roma, I segreti di Parigi. With Mauro Pesce, Inchiesta su Gesù, and with Marco Vannini, Inchiesta su Maria. For Einaudi, he published Il sangue e il potere. Processo a Giulio Cesare, Tiberio e Nerone (together with Vladimiro Polchi, ET Pop 2008), the novel Il lato oscuro del cuore (Supercoralli 2014), Le ultime diciotto ore di Gesù (2015 and 2016), I segreti di Istanbul (2016 and 2017), Questa nostra Italia (2017 and 2018), with Giovanni Filoramo, Il grande romanzo dei Vangeli (2019 and 2021), Breviario per un confuso presente (2020), Modigliani. L'ultimo romantico (2020), I segreti di Roma cristiana (2024, published in 2022 with the title La fine di Roma), La vita s'impara (2024), and curated the collection Racconti parigini (2018).