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Southern Italy’s Tiniest Library
The treasure of Basilicata
“We cannot live without books,” said former elementary school teacher Antonio La Cava who transformed his Ape three-wheeler van into a turquoise Bibliomotocarro (a mobile book library) to spread the joy of reading to young villagers in the mountainous countryside of Basilicata, Italy. According to La Cava, who calls himself “the master of the road,” Books are essential for human development. “Without a book, so often a child is alone.”
In many remote villages in Southern Italy, the population is so small that there isn’t an infrastructure to provide adequate educational services. San Paolo Albanese, province of Potenza, with a population of 328 and only a handful of school-age children is one of them. Books provide children adventure, companionship, culture — a road to bridge the distance to the world.
Antonio Cava spreads his love of literature through the southern region of Basilicata nestled between Calabria and Puglia regions, and the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas — an area considered to be “people poor” because of its geographical remoteness. In 1932, the Fascists changed the name of Basilicata to Lucania. (It changed its name back in 1948.) Basilicata is also where Italian painter/writer Carlo Levi penned Cristo si è fermato a Eboli while exiled for his left-wing ideology. Levi describes…
