Berlin Review · 33-what-writers-get-wrong-about-ai

Audio 33

“You’re Doing the Work for Them”: Claudia Durastanti on Class and Literature

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A writer grows up poor, escapes her circumstances and writes about it with a mix of shame, guilt and pride. It’s one of the most classic tales in modern literature, and Claudia Durastanti thinks the story stopped being true just as the genre boomed. In this conversation, she and Lauren Oyler talk about autofiction, transfuge de classe narratives and what could be written instead.

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26 Jun 2026 Anhören Weniger

Audio 33

Claudia Durastanti was born in Brooklyn in the eighties and grew up between the US and rural southern Italy. Her novel La Straniera was a finalist for the Premio Strega. The English translation Strangers I Know received a PEN award. She now lives in Rome, where she writes and translates, including the latest Italian edition of The Great Gatsby.

For Berlin Review, Claudia wrote about transfuge de classe narratives, the genre of literature where writers from poor backgrounds escape their circumstances and look back on their upbringings with a mix of shame, guilt and pride. You can read about why Claudia says this genre began booming just as the reality of upward mobility for working class people became out-of-reach.

Read her essay, “A Literature for the Downwardly Mobile,” at https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-06/durastanti-literature-for-the-downwardly-mobile

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Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Veröffentlicht am 26 Jun 2026