Federica de Cesco to lecture at the University of St.Gallen

13 February 2018. The aim of writing is to make others see, said the Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad. The more authoritatively writers succeed in presenting their interpretation of the world, the more this world will become real and alive for their readers. But what role does a writer’s unconscious play? This is the question that Federica de Cesco will examine in her public lectures.

Freedom – a vital issue
Federica de Cesco is certain that writers are able to dissimulate and hide behind the various episodes of a plot, for they are shrewd word-actors who are able to present any fiction in credible and vivid terms. Try as they might to conceal their own unconscious behind the inventions of their imagination, writers still reveal something of themselves that can be surmised between the lines and constantly comes to the fore through images. Thus writers always establish a connection to their own mental world in their stories. These mental worlds change or renew themselves in the course of time, but they refer to an enduring basic pattern again and again. Federica de Cesco's books are also pervaded by such a basic pattern: it is the postulate of freedom. This desire for freedom was a central concern for Federica de Cesco even when she was a young woman. Thus freedom is a constant that has become an actual vital issue for Federica de Cesco in her six decades of writing.

One of the most widely read authors of books for young people in the German-speaking area

Federica de Cesco was born near Venice in 1938. The daughter of an Italian engineer and a German mother grew up multilingually in various places in Italy, Ethiopia, Germany and Belgium. Federica de Cesco studied languages and psychology at the University of Liège (Belgium) and moved to Switzerland in 1962. Today, she lives in Lucerne.

Federica de Cesco was 15 when she wrote her first book for young people, Der rote Seidenschal. However, her books have not only inspired young people but from the 1990s onwards increasingly also adults. With more than 50 books for young people published, Federica de Cesco is one of the most widely read authors of books for young people in the German-speaking area.

Picture: Federica de Cesco, Fotolia/anyaberkut