THE LAKE’S WATER IS NEVER SWEET
L’acqua del lago non è mai dolce
Friday, April 10, 2026 | 6:30 PM
Italian Cultural Institute, 710 Sansome St, San Francisco
On the occasion of La Piazza – San Francisco Italian Literary Festival, the Italian Cultural Institute San Francisco, in collaboration with the cultural association Librai in corso, presents:
The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet
(L’acqua del lago non è mai dolce)
Spiegel & Grau, 2025
by Giulia Caminito
An event hosted at the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, featuring author Giulia Caminito in conversation with Cristina Farronato.
Presentation in Italian with English translation
Event open to the public | Registration required
The smell of slimy algae and dense sand, the scent of wet feathers. An ancient crater now filled with water: this is Lake Bracciano, where Antonia’s family arrives, fleeing the indifference of Rome. Antonia is a proud and stubborn woman who cares for her disabled husband and four children. She is deeply honest, unwilling to compromise, and believes in the common good—yet she wants to teach her only daughter to rely solely on her own ability to keep her head held high. Gaia learns not to complain, to take the regional train to school every day, to read books, to hide her phone in a shoebox, to dive into the lake even when the currents pull toward the bottom. This freckled girl may seem to bow her head, but when she lifts her gaze, her eyes shine with an almost pitch-black intensity.
Winner of the Premio Campiello, The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet portrays the unease of a young woman and her generation, raised on an unrealistic future. Rooted in reality while infused with a deep sense of unrest, the novel uses a precise, essential, and at times sharp yet poetic prose as the last defense against the ghosts that loom over the present.
With remarkable psychological insight, Giulia Caminito explores the protagonist’s inner conflict, torn between the desire to connect with others and the need to protect herself from the world, revealing how tenderness and fragility often lie just beneath a layer of quiet fury.
GIULIA CAMINITO
Giulia Caminito was born in 1988 and lives in Rome. Her first novel, La grande A (Giunti, 2016), won the Premio Bagutta Opera Prima, the Premio Berto, and the Premio Brancati Giovani. She has written novels, short stories, and children’s books. She has published with Bompiani Un Giorno verrà, L’acqua del lago non è mai dolce (winner of the 2021 Premio Campiello and finalist for the 2021 Premio Strega), and Il male che non c’è (2024). Her books have been translated into over twenty countries. She contributes to magazines and newspapers and works in the publishing industry.
CRISTINA FARRONATO
Cristina Farronato is a Lecturer and Language Program Coordinator in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on contemporary Italian literature and culture, semiotic theory, including the semiotics of film, as well as linguistics and translation studies. She has a particular scholarly interest in the work of Umberto Eco and the intersections between literature, visual culture, and theory. She is the author of Eco’s Chaosmos: From the Middle Ages to Postmodernity, a study of Umberto Eco’s intellectual and literary trajectory, and has published numerous articles on Eco, semiotics, Italian fiction, film, and the visual arts.
Immagine: Andrea Ottaviani