Ettore Castagnola

Trieste

Ettore Castagnola is an essayist and former second-hand bookseller from Trieste. He writes short argumentative pieces about cities, reading and the objects people leave behind. For twenty years he has kept a notebook of marginalia found in used books, which he describes as the only anthology he will ever finish. He is working on a collection of essays about furniture.

ITEN

Published on HANEEN

A brass letterbox slot in an old wooden front door, lit by low warm sunlight

OTHER

Letters to a Future Tenant

Before leaving a flat he had rented for nine years, a writer left three letters in a kitchen drawer for whoever came next. These are the drafts.

A pencil and a pair of folded reading glasses resting on a worn wooden table in warm window light

ESSAY & CRITICISM

Reading in the Margins of a Used Book

For twenty years a bookseller copied out the notes strangers left in the margins of second-hand books. On what those notes reveal, and why he never tried to find their authors.

Screen-printed illustration of a pristine sofa between two floor lamps and two potted plants, in flat ochre and terracotta

OPINION & ARGUMENT

Against the Showroom Apartment

The show flat is designed so that nobody could ever have lived in it. That is its whole purpose, and it is teaching us to be ashamed of the rooms we actually live in.