Wu Ming
Wu Ming, Chinese for "anonymous", is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna.
Unlike the open name "Luther Blissett", "Wu Ming" stands for a defined group of writers active in literature and popular culture.
Their books are seen as part of a body of literary works (the "nebula", as it is frequently called in Italy) described as the New Italian Epic, a phrase that was proposed by Wu Ming.
The name is meant both as a tribute to dissidents ("Wu Ming" is a common byline among Chinese citizens demanding democracy and freedom of speech) and as a rejection of the celebrity-making machine which turns the author into a star.
Their real names are not secret, though: The five authors do extensive book tours (which they describe as "almost gratefuldeadesque"[7]) and frequently appear in public.
Well, it never ever happened, but it's true that, like Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia or King Kong in the famous gala opening scene, we're no camera-mongers.
Several narrative threads are woven around Radio Alice, the station run by the "creative wing" (the so-called "Mao-Dadaists") of the radical Autonomia movement.
On 13 March the premises of Radio Alice were invaded and vandalised by the police, the station was shut down and every member of the staff was arrested.
All novels will be set in the 1770s, all across the Atlantic Ocean (North America, Europe, the West Indies and Africa), before and during the American Revolution.
In an entry on their weblog, Wu Ming wrote that Manituana was written between 2003 and 2007, and it soaked up all the tensions of that period: S11, the Neoconservative hegemony on US foreign policy, the lies on Saddam allegedly keeping weapons of mass destruction hidden in the desert, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, George W. Bush winning his second term thanks to the Christian right in 2004, Silvio Burlesquoni conquering the hearts and minds of the majority of Italians etc.
In May 2009 Wu Ming announced that they had almost finished writing a new book, entitled Altai, set "in [their debut novel] Q's world and historical continuum".
Wu Ming 1 is the author of New Thing (2004), an "unidentified narrative object" blending fiction, journalism and free verse.
The French newspaper Le Monde described the book as "a choral novel, an inquiry, and a political jam-session loaded with syncopated poetry".
[19] Wu Ming 2 is the author of Guerra agli umani [War on the Humans] (2004), a satire of primitivism and survivalism set on the Apennines in an undefined year.
At the beginning of the book, Marco quits his job as a restroom cleaner at a big cemetery, because he wants to leave the city (presumably Bologna, although it remains unnamed), go to the mountains and become a "hunter-gatherer superhero".
Among the characters Lawrence encounters in the book, important roles are played by writers J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and, most notably, Robert Graves.
Free Karma Food describes a future society where all kinds of cattle have been killed by a global pandemic known as "The Great Murrain".
[24] Wu Ming 2 has written the theater play Razza Partigiana in 2013; he is also participating on stage, with musical support from Paul Pieretto, Federico Oppi (Settlefish) and Egle Sommacal (Massimo Volume).
