English 
Italiano 
Born in Parma, Mauro Martini Raccasi was the first in Italy to graduate in economics with a thesis about journalism at IFOR institute of Bocconi University in Milan. He made his debut in fiction with a historical saga, the tetralogy “Il Romanzo dei Celti” (The novel of the Celts), moving on to other genres, such as the Bildungsroman for adolescents or children’s books. Let’s know him together with some direct question.
I see from your resume after you graduate you have worked many years in marketing. How did you get into writing?
Sports accident. Two broken vertebrae. Months of forced inactivity that convinced me to apply myself to the end in what was the dream of a lifetime: to write and publish as an author. Then an ambitious project… a publishing house failed… the same project to a bigger publisher… bingo!
You are a novelist, a journalist, a screenwriter and a scriptwriter, a professor of creative writing…which one of these activities gives you more satisfaction? What do you enjoy the most?
I like to call myself a gipsy of the word, a scoundrel, an adrenaline dealer. The important thing is to create. New stories each time. The first part is always the most beautiful, one that promises more. As in the courtship of a woman. Then take over technique, applied experience, rules, the stakes to be respected. The last two years have asked me to teach this technique. It is a transmit knowledge and wisdom. It is constructive. I see people sharing the same passion that level every social barrier. Each diversity, every distance flattens. all equal before God. Equal dignity. Shrugged off the initial distrust, they forget everything else and dive into the subject of study; kidnapped by words such as all of us children in front of the fairy tales we have been told or read. I do it with passion. And I am paid back. All the way. From the letters that particularly generous people bestow me, to the crowd of students at nine o’clock in the evening, half an hour after the end of the lesson, who are still there that turn around me and want to talk, learn, grow, grow up, or simply make their dreams come true. Many of them are smart. They have only to be trained.
What is currently your best selling book?
I don’t know what to think: the first, “La Spada del Druido” (The Druid’s sword). In pocket version has been reissued and was Top Ten Italy for two weeks at Christmas and before the New Year.
Last question, rite: What’s cooking?
I posted the last children’s book in March 2013. Now it is time to start a thriller with serial killings. In a place that is in everyone’s dreams.
