Daniela Dawan "La colpa di tacere"

April 9, 2026·22 min·2 clips

A Supreme Court judge who fled Libya as a child reveals how a family secret shatters her fictional counterpart's legal certainties.

The episode features an interview with Daniela Dawan, a judge on Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation and author of the novel 'La colpa di tacere'. Dawan begins by describing her judicial role, emphasizing that Cassation judges evaluate legal correctness in appeals, not the factual merits of cases. She then introduces her protagonist, Jacopo Cardoso, a Cassation judge who unusually delves into a case file, uncovering a family secret linked to post-World War II events. The discussion centers on the novel's exploration of silence as both virtuous restraint and guilty complicity. Dawan analyzes her characters' psychological struggles, particularly Jacopo's betrayal of himself and Elena's use of removal to cope. She connects these themes to real-life legal scenarios where silence can imply guilt. The conversation touches on memory's role in shaping behavior and the contrast between historical fact and personal recollection. Dawan shares her reading habits, mentioning French-Belgian author Amélie Nothomb as a stylistic counterpoint to her own writing and her past study of Proust. She reflects on the challenges of avoiding overly technical legal language in her literary work. The episode concludes with details about the novel's presentation at the Festival di Lignano on April 11.

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