'Weeping people desperately sought family photos'. Franco Faggiani wrote a novel about the earthquakes in Italy

Houses, monuments, shops and streets were wiped off the map. Nearly three hundred people died under the rubble. Franco Faggiani (73) wrote a gripping book about the earthquake that hit central Italy five years ago: Sometimes I would like to be the wind.

Good luck

Whenever possible, Franco Faggiani heads into the northern Italian mountains.

Even now, he is in the Piedmont Alps, at 1,700 metres, in the sun and snow. 'Especially in winter, I like being here. Tomorrow I have to go to Liguria for a lecture on my new novel, 250 kilometres south, then I will drive back,' he says.

After a long career in journalism, he made his debut as a novelist in 2018 at 70 with Between two worlds. He broke through in the Netherlands a year later when the book panel of The World Turned Door his novel The year Shizo Kanakuri disappeared proclaimed Book of the Month.

Success has not dramatically changed his life, says Faggiani. 'As a writer, you are often wrongly put on a pedestal. After a presentation, a lady came up to me and exclaimed in surprise: gosh, you are actually a very ordinary person!'

 Your new novel is about the earthquake of 24 August 2016, which razed numerous villages and hamlets in central Italy. Did you know the area from before?

'Yes, I knew the affected places well, acquaintances of mine lived there, so my thoughts immediately went to them. The historical centre of Amatrice, where my novel is mainly set, was wiped out. The village itself had 2,200 inhabitants, and then it also has 69 sub-villages scattered in the mountains. The weekend after the earthquake, the big annual festival in honour of the pasta all'amatriciana take place, attracting thousands of visitors every year. I feared there would be huge numbers of people under the rubble. As no communication was possible, I went to the hit areas as soon as I could. What I found was terrible. The houses, towers, buildings, monuments, shops and streets had been swept away, there was only sand, earth, stones and dust.'

In Amatrice, 230 were killed: a miracle, considering the thousands of visitors. 

'Indeed a miracle, especially since the quake was at 3.30 a.m. AND because the walls collapsed inwards, which is much more dangerous than if they fall outwards. The first emergency services were there within an hour, an hour and a half - they had to come from Rieti, some 60 kilometres away. By the end of the first day, there were almost more emergency workers than residents. In such a situation, everything revolves around speed. 238 people were eventually pulled out from under the rubble.'

What hit you the most?

'The stories of firefighters about homeowners who wanted to save photographs above all: black-and-white photos of grandparents, weddings, family parties in the countryside. They wanted to save their memories. Many of those stories ended up in the book in modified form.

Recently I was at café Meletti in Ascoli Piceno, where the opening scene of my novel takes place. There I met two people who lost everything in the earthquake. One of them was a grandmother of 45 who had lost her one-and-a-half-year-old grandson. She told me that at first she found it difficult to read my book, but eventually she had taken comfort from it.'

Reconstruction

What is it like in Amatrice now?

'There are supermarkets, pharmacies and other public centres again but some 70 per cent of the population still cannot return home and are still living in the prefabricated emergency shelters of five years ago. Rebuilding their homes is a problem. Not only because of the gigantic bureaucracy, but also because everything has to be earthquake-proof. There are also all sorts of large buildings that still need to be demolished, but where should all that waste go? Nobody wants it and the costs to dispose of and process it are huge. For construction companies, building a flat block in the city is much more lucrative than rebuilding a mountain village.'

 The economic damage is huge, but what are the social consequences?

'Many people, especially young people, have moved away and that worries me. If reconstruction is not fast enough, they will become deserted ghost villages. That's why I wanted my novel to bring this situation back into focus five years on. Fortunately, the reconstruction of Amatrice has started well since seven months; 400 workers have been assigned to collect special stones, tiles and decorations with which to reconstruct the facades of the old buildings and monuments. They are also making the hamlets around them habitable again. In a village where nothing happened until six months ago, there are now 11 hoisting cranes. It is important to reconstruct the social fabric, otherwise people lose hope. And without hope, there is no future.'