“PREMIO GUARESCHI 2026” Paolo Albani

Paolo Albani, visual poet and writer, edits Tèchne, a journal of literary and non-literary curiosities. A member of Oplepo (Opificio di Letteratura Potenziale — the Italian Workshop of Potential Literature), he is the author of three extravagant (and successful) encyclopaedias published by Zanichelli: Aga magéra difúra: Dictionary of Imaginary Languages (1994; Les Belles Lettres, 2000); Forse Queneau: Encyclopaedia of Anomalous Sciences (1999); and Mirabiblia: An Annotated Catalogue of Unfindable Books (2003). He is also the author of the short story collections Il sosia laterale e altre recensioni (Edizioni Sylvestre Bonnard, 2003) and La governante di Jevons: Storie di precursori dimenticati (Campanotto, 2007).

For Quodlibet he has published Umorismo involontario (2016), I mattoidi italiani (2012), and Dizionario degli istituti anomali nel mondo (2011).

And to sum it all up, a postscript in the spirit so dear to Cesare Zavattini:

Paolo Albani deserves the Guareschi Prize because he is, above all, a humorist who shakes language and poetry to their foundations — a linguistic acrobat who plays, with equal measures of seriousness and wit, sending critics and semioticians into raptures. And the public too.