- Bancarella Literary Award, is an Italian prize born in 1953. It is celebrated every year in the town of Pontremoli, in the province of Massa Carrara, Tuscany. It is a prize established by Italian booksellers who chose the best one out of a selection of six novels. The lucky winner is announced in the penultimate Saturday or Sunday of July. The short list contains six novels all written in Italian by Italian writers or literary translations from foreign writers. Over the years, the award was given to well know International writers such as Hemingway for The Old Man and the Sea" (1953), Boris Pasternak for "Doctor Zhivago " (1958), John Grisham, Umberto Eco and Elizabeth Strout. This year the winner will announced on July 16th. The novels from the short list are: "Il giardino dei fiori segreti" by Cristina Caboni, published in October 2016; "La locanda dell'ultima solutudine" by Alessandro Barbaglia, published in January 2016; "Gocce di veleno" by Valeria Benatti, published in September 2016; "Magari domani resto" by Lorenzo Marone, published in January 2017, "I medici una dinastia al potere " published in October 2016. This list also contains a Japanese writer Yung-Myung Lee and the Italian translation of his novel "La guardia, il poeta e l'investigatore " published in Italy in January 2016. This last novel was also translated into English under the title "The Investigation " published in 2015.
