Roads, margins, and restless adolescences in the Maremma of Niccolò Ammaniti
- maremmadesign
- Feb 3
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 10
“Already a few kilometers from the Saturnia hot springs, the atmosphere changes. A traveler passing along that road without knowing about the presence of a thermal spring would be, at the very least, bewildered.”
Ti prendo e ti porto via
The Maremma is not just a geographical place: in contemporary fiction it often becomes a mental space, shaped by distances, waiting, and sudden accelerations. In Ti prendo e ti porto via by Niccolò Ammaniti, this territory turns into the ideal stage for portraying adolescence, unease, and the desire to escape.
The novel is set in a Maremma that is both recognizable and transfigured. Straight roads, open fields, and provincial stations are not mere backdrops: they act upon the characters, amplifying their restlessness. The Aurelia road cuts through the narrative like a boundary line. It is the road of trucks, roadside bars, and dreams that rush by without ever stopping. In one of the book’s most evocative passages, the asphalt of the Aurelia appears as a continuous ribbon that both separates and connects different worlds—a place where “cars pass by without looking at anyone,” a phrase that powerfully conveys the pervasive sense of marginality running through the novel.
Places and non-places
Alongside the main road lies Ischiana Scalo, an invented railway station that feels profoundly real. Like many minor stations in the Maremma, Ischiana Scalo is a non-place of deserted platforms, wrong timetables, and trains that rarely stop. Here unfold some of the novel’s most intense scenes: endless waiting, missed departures, adolescents staring at the tracks as if they were a promise of elsewhere. Ammaniti describes the station as a suspended space, where “time seems to stand still,” a threshold between who one is and who one wishes to become.
The novel’s strength lies precisely in this use of the Maremma as an emotional landscape. There is no nostalgia, no idealization: the countryside is harsh, the heat oppressive, the silences heavy. And yet, within this toughness, the possibility of movement—of escape, of change—constantly opens up. Roads, tracks, and stops become metaphors for an irregular and painful coming of age.
The literary Maremma is not far from the real one
For those staying at Maremma Design, rereading Ti prendo e ti porto via means looking at the territory with new eyes. Driving along a stretch of the Aurelia, stopping near a small station, watching the landscape drift slowly past a car window—these everyday gestures gain a new density when seen through Ammaniti’s prose. The literary Maremma is not far from the real one. It is there, in the margins, in the voids, in places of passage. You just have to know how to see and listen.
In brief
Niccolò Ammaniti, Ti prendo e ti porto via, Mondadori, 1999.
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