The conversation between journalist and historian Paola Caridi and writer Helena Janeczek takes place within the exhibition Push The Limits 2.
The meeting, stemming from a discussion of the themes explored in Sudari. Elegia per Gaza, recently published by Caridi with Feltrinelli, seeks to broaden the conversation from the works on display to our relationship with war and the notion of responsibility.
It asserts the need to call by name every person killed in Gaza — lives not erased by the white of the countless shrouds in which pity has wrapped their bodies, but instead revealed to our numbed and distracted consciences through this final act of humanity.
Paola Caridi, born in Rome, is a historian and journalist. She holds a PhD in the History of International Relations and has lived in the Middle East and Arab countries since 2001. She first moved to Cairo, a few months before 9/11, and later to Jerusalem, where since 2003 she has been a correspondent for Lettera22, an association of independent journalists specialising in foreign affairs, of which she is one of the founders.
In 2007, she published Arabi invisibili (Invisible Arabs), an essay that won the Capalbio Prize in 2008 and inspired her blog Invisible Arabs. In 2009, she wrote Hamas, one of the most comprehensive investigations to date on the Palestinian political movement, published also in the United States and reissued in an updated edition following the bloody attacks of 2023 and the ensuing conflict.
Her 2013 book Gerusalemme senza Dio (Jerusalem Without God) was inspired by her years of reporting from the Holy City. The same city — and the wounds undermining coexistence between two peoples and the building of a shared history — are also at the heart of her children’s book Gerusalemme. La storia dell’altro (Jerusalem. The Other’s Story, 2019) and Il gelso di Gerusalemme (The Mulberry Tree of Jerusalem, 2024).
She collaborates with various international policy research centres, including ISPI and IAI, as well as with national newspapers.
Helena Janeczek was born in Munich in 1964 to a Polish-Jewish family. In the early 1980s, she moved to Italy, and in 1989 she made her debut with a collection of poems in German, Ins Freie. She began working in publishing as a consultant for foreign fiction with Adelphi and Mondadori, and has collaborated with the literary magazines Nazione Indiana and Nuovi Argomenti.
In 1997 she published the semi-autobiographical book Lezioni di tenebra (Lessons of Darkness), which won the Bagutta Opera Prima and Giuseppe Berto prizes. Among her works are the novels — all written in Italian — Cibo (Food, 2002), Le rondini di Montecassino (The Swallows of Monte Cassino, 2010), and La ragazza con la Leica (The Girl with the Leica, 2017), which won both the Strega Prize and the Bagutta Prize, and tells the story of Gerda Taro, the first female war photographer to die in combat.
Janeczek has taken part in numerous events on the theme of the Shoah, and she is also the founder and organiser of the “SI – Scrittrici Insieme” (Women Writers Together) literary festival, held in Gallarate.
