Maria Rago's debut novel brings Fernando Nannetti's asylum wall to life

Dear Wall, the first novel from Maria Rago, is now out worldwide in paperback and Kindle. The book fictionalizes the life of Italian psychiatric patient Fernando Nannetti and lands as salvaged sections of his actual wall go on display in Volterra, Italy.

Why it matters: - Dear Wall turns one of outsider art's strangest survival stories into a novel as Nannetti's preserved wall art enters a public exhibition in Italy. - The release connects fiction, preservation, and mental-health history in a way that lets readers encounter the story on the page and in person. - The novel also spotlights the people who protected the work after Nannetti's death, especially the nurse who chose to preserve it.

What happened: - Maria Rago's debut novel, Dear Wall, is now available worldwide in paperback and Kindle editions. - The novel is a fictionalized account inspired by Fernando Oreste Nannetti, the Italian psychiatric patient who engraved a continuous book into the courtyard wall of the Volterra asylum. - Nannetti was committed in 1948 and transferred to San Girolamo asylum in Volterra in 1958. - He signed the wall as NOF4 and spent more than a decade carving daily entries into about 150 meters of plaster using only the buckle of his uniform. - Salvaged sections of Nannetti's actual wall are on public display in the exhibition Graffi Profondi at the Centro Espositivo Santa Maria Maddalena in Volterra, Italy, through September 27, 2026. - A cast of the wall is held in the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne.

The details: - The novel imagines the story through Aldo Ferretti, a fictionalized version of nurse Aldo Trafeli, who copies the wall into notebooks at his kitchen table over many years. - The book says that act of preservation came at real cost to Ferretti's family. - Eight meters of the wall were saved in an initial 2012 campaign. - More of the wall was lifted in 2019 before frost and exposure could erase the rest. - Dear Wall spans 1927 to 2026 and moves between postwar Italian psychiatry and the reforms that emptied the asylums. - The novel follows the wall through three generations: the man who carved it, the nurse who transcribed it, and the granddaughter who meets it behind museum glass. - The story draws on the 1980 photographic campaign, the 1985 volume NOF4: Il Libro della Vita, and Antonio Tabucchi's 1986 essay that brought Nannetti wider attention. - An author's note separates documented history from the fictional interior lives. - The book is available on Amazon in paperback with ISBN 979-8-2408-4782-0 and Kindle with ISBN 979-8-2408-4783-7. - Distribution is expanding to additional retailers worldwide. - Paperback edition - Kindle edition

Between the lines: - Rago frames the novel as an attempt to give Nannetti a monument in paper after his own request for a stone monument was not fulfilled in his lifetime. - The project positions preservation as a moral act, not just an art-historical one. - Booknality's support suggests the publisher sees the book as both a literary release and a heritage story. - Alex Foster of Booknality said the book explores the difference between a record and a person, and described the novel as an act of care for a man the world had filed away.

What's next: - Readers can visit the Volterra exhibition through September 27, 2026, while the novel continues its rollout to more retailers. - The company expects wider availability as distribution expands globally. - The author's note gives readers a guide to where documented history ends and fiction begins.

The bottom line: - Dear Wall links one man's erased life, the people who preserved his work, and a public exhibition that brings the story back into view.