Maria Rago's debut novel turns a psychiatric wall-book into fiction

Dear Wall, the debut novel by Maria Rago, is now out worldwide in paperback and Kindle, reimagining the life and wall-writing of Fernando Oreste Nannetti, an Italian asylum patient who carved a continuous book into plaster. The release lands as surviving sections of Nannetti's actual wall are on public display in Volterra, Italy.

Why it matters: - Dear Wall turns one of outsider art's most unusual archives into a new novel, bringing Fernando Oreste Nannetti's wall-inscribed history to readers in paperback and Kindle. - The book also arrives while surviving sections of Nannetti's wall are on view in Volterra, giving readers a chance to move between fiction and the physical artifact. - The story centers attention on Nannetti, the nurse who preserved the wall text, and the preservation work that kept the record alive.

What happened: - Maria Rago's debut novel Dear Wall is now available worldwide in paperback and Kindle editions. - The book is a fictionalized account inspired by Fernando Oreste Nannetti, the Italian psychiatric patient who spent more than a decade engraving a continuous book into the courtyard wall of the Volterra asylum. - Nannetti was committed in 1948 and transferred to Volterra's San Girolamo pavilion in 1958. - Nannetti signed the wall work NOF4 and covered about 180 meters of plaster with daily entries. - The novel is published with Booknality and is available on Amazon, with distribution expanding to additional retailers worldwide. - Paperback: Paperback edition - Kindle: Kindle edition

The details: - Nannetti's wall text described cosmic voyages, a mineral empire, telepathic dispatches, and grief for the men disappearing around him. - The work survived because one nurse chose to notice. - Dear Wall imagines that act of attention through Aldo Ferretti, a fictionalized version of the real nurse Aldo Trafeli. - In the novel, Ferretti copies the wall into notebooks at his kitchen table year after year, at real cost to his family, until the wall is photographed, published, and recognized as outsider art. - The novel spans 1927 to 2026 and moves between postwar Italian psychiatry and the reforms that emptied the institutions. - The story follows three generations: the man who carved the wall, the nurse who transcribed it, and the granddaughter who encounters it behind museum glass. - The book draws on the 1980 photographic campaign, the 1985 volume NOF4: Il Libro della Vita, and Antonio Tabucchi's 1986 essay that introduced Nannetti to a wider audience. - An author's note identifies where the documented record ends and the fiction begins. - Salvaged sections of Nannetti's actual wall are on display in Graffi Profondi at the Centro Espositivo Santa Maria Maddalena in Volterra, Italy, through September 27, 2026. - A cast of the work is held in the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne.

Between the lines: - The novel frames preservation as an act of witness, not just restoration. - By pairing a documented archive with invented interior lives, the book invites readers to think about who gets remembered and how fragile the record can be. - Maria Rago said the novel is an attempt to give Nannetti a monument in paper and to honor the ordinary people who decided he deserved to be read. - Alex Foster of Booknality said the project focuses on the difference between a record and a person and was handled with unusual care.

What's next: - Readers can buy the book now in paperback and Kindle. - Additional retailer distribution is expected to expand worldwide. - The Volterra exhibition remains open through September 27, 2026, giving the novel a real-world counterpart while the display is still on view. - Booknality says its broader services include ghostwriting, editing, publishing, book marketing, and global brand visibility for authors worldwide.

The bottom line: - Dear Wall uses fiction to reframe a little-known asylum wall as literature, art, and testimony at once. - The release adds a new narrative layer just as Nannetti's surviving wall gains fresh public attention.