​Sofia and the Pirates in Pier Vittorio Mannucci's First Novel

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT THE DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY, MANNUCCI HAS WRITTEN A CHILDREN'S BOOK PUBLISHED BY MONDADORI. WHICH, IF ALL GOES WELL, WILL BE THE FIRST OF A LONG SERIES

Whether it will be the beginning of a saga, like that of his beloved Tolkien, is not yet known. It will depend on how the sales of this first volume go, on his commitments as a university researcher, and on that pinch of imponderable that accompanies the lives of each of us. But the intention is there, and the creative energy as well – we’ll see about the rest.  Pier Vittorio Mannucci, assistant professor at the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University, has just published his debut novel, an adventurous tale for children entitled I corsari del tempo (The Time Pirates), published by Mondadori.

"A work that has reached its final draft after many second thoughts and many rewrites, before squaring  the circle," says Mannucci, "but now I am satisfied. It is essentially an adventure book that was inspired by reality and that contains some themes that boys have to deal with on a daily basis: bullying, and the difficulty of being taken seriously by the 'grown-ups'. Plus the fact that the main character is a girl, Sofia, who must assert herself in an environment - that of the pirates – that is predominantly male. I did not think a priori of having to write a book with a female protagonist, it came to me like this, I can’t give myself any particular rational explanation."

As a scientist, he deals among other things with diverse creative processes, and manages to trace the complicated mechanisms that produced them, but not of this. Yet, between writing science papers and children's novels there are also many things in common. "Even in a scientific paper there is a kind of narrative writing that aims to involve the reader," explains Mannucci, "these are not two distinct worlds. And even in this case you should in a first draft put on paper whatever comes to mind and only then cut, adjust, give a definitive shape. Just like you do when you write a novel." Or a theatrical play, since that is where his career as a writer began, with his debuts in high school and then at university, right at Bocconi where he graduated in 2009 in Economics and Management for Arts, Culture, Media and Entertainment.

The characters in his novel have all the characteristics to open a series, like Harry Potter. However, unlike the famous work of J.K.  Rowling long rejected by publishers, Pier Vittorio Mannucci's work was immediately accepted by one of the major Italian publishing houses. If we are faced with a new literary phenomenon we will see it over time. Meanwhile, Pier Vittorio laid the foundations: "I tried to give depth to the world I created, leaving spaces to deepen and aspects to develop with other adventures and other books. Sofia, in short, could really come back."

by Davide Ripamonti
Translated by Richard Greenslade