Mariella torna a casa. La rappresentazione dell’Italia in alcuni romanzi in francese di Gilda Piersanti e nelle loro autotraduzioni italiane

Gilda Piersanti (1957) is an Italian-French author of crime novels and thrillers. The eight volumes of her series “Les Saisons meurtrières” have achieved good public recognition in France – a success which also led to the making of four films for tv. Piersanti – who was born in Italy and moved to France only as an adult, after completing her university studies – writes her novels in French but sets them in Italy, in Rome; the protagonist of “Les Saisons meurtrières” is Mariella de Luca, an inspector of the capital’s police. The French success has meant that some novels in the series have also been published in Italy, first by Bompiani and then by La Nave di Teseo, in translations made by the author. In her novels written in French, Piersanti adds different touches of “local color”, which make them more commercially attractive for her primarily French public. This paper analyzes the Italian self-translations Estate assassina (2016), Roma enigma (2017), and Giallo Caravaggio (2017) focusing on the depiction of Italianness, in order to see if, and how, this aspect has been adapted in the Italian versions.