{"status":"success","siteTitle":"Assisted Lab\nLiving Archive of Assisted Dying","title":"\u2018Accabadora\u2019 by Michela Murgia","slug":"accabadora","url":"https:\/\/assistedlab.ch\/textual\/accabadora","body":"

Michela Murgia\u2019s 2009 novel Accabadora<\/em> opens with a definition: \u2018Fillus de anima\u2019 (soul child). \u2018That\u2019s what they call children born twice, by the poverty of one woman and the sterility of another\u2019 (translated from the Italian, as all other quotes, unless noted otherwise). The protagonist is Maria Listru, the fourth biological daughter of Anna Teresa Listru and soul-child of Bonaria Urrai, aka Tzia Bonaria, whom we soon learn is the title character. From the Spanish verb \u2018acabar\u2019, \u2018accabadora\u2019 means \u2018the one who finishes\u2019 \u2013 an angel of mercy that helps end the suffering of the dying in Sardinian folktales. The story takes place in the fictional village of Soreni, but in the historical post-war of 1950s Sardinia. Though not strictly \u2018war widows\u2019, the fates of Maria\u2019s two mothers are linked to WWII: since Anna Teresa\u2019s husband did not die in war (but in a freak accident with a tractor), she receives no pension; and Bonaria never got to marry, as her fianc\u00e9 did not return from combat. When Bonaria brings Maria to her new home, the child thinks her adoptive mother is a seamstress. Indeed, Maria learns that trade from Bonaria, who also insists that Maria assiduously attend school. Maria and her teacher Luciana (who is from Turin) seem to be the only ones unaware of Bonaria\u2019s other occupation. But Maria starts to grow suspicious, as Bonaria occasionally sneaks out in the middle of the night. In one such departure, Bonaria is called to end the suffering of Jusepi Vargiu, who, according to his daughter, has been ill for 2 years, immobile for almost 8 months, and uncommunicative for more than a week. Yet, when left alone with the supposed moribund, Bonaria finds out he still speaks; she refuses to help him die and curses the family for lying and wanting to dispose of their father before his hour. If Bonaria\u2019s due-diligence criteria seem clear, they will be challenged by Nicola Bast\u00edu, who had his leg amputated and now wants to die: he is young, not terminally ill, and doesn\u2019t have the blessing of his family. He asks Bonaria for help anyway, as he feels he is already dead. She challenges his equating being a man with having both legs but eventually acquiesces, because Nicola\u2019s resolve reminds Bonaria of her own long-lost love, who once said he would prefer to die than live mutilated. When Maria finds out Bonaria is the accabadora, she leaves her soul-mother to become a live-in nanny for a family in Turin. After Bonaria has a stroke, Maria rushes back home to care for her, discovering firsthand how much suffering is too much to witness.<\/p>

Despite the novel\u2019s well-known portrayal of euthanasia, Murgia told Socrem Bologna<\/em> that her original motivation was to write about soul-filiation, the traditional Sardinian practice of informal adoption. Crooked Timber<\/em> reports that, as a teenager, Murgia herself was taken in by another family as a soul-child. The novel opens with a dedication that plays with the number-agreement of the word \u2018mother\u2019: \u2018To my mother. Both of them\u2019 (sic). A reviewer for Le Idi di<\/em> highlights how the role of women in a patriarchal society drives the narrative \u2013 through the invisible labour of mothering and the formation of unorthodox families. When Maria accuses Bonaria of rushing death because things should be left alone, Bonaria replies: \u2018Were you by any chance born alone, Maria? Did you leave your mother\u2019s womb by your own strength? Or weren\u2019t you instead born with someone\u2019s help, like all the living?\u2019 Bonaria then states that, even if her \u2018womb was never opened\u2019, she has a role to play \u2013 \u2018the last one\u2026 the last mother some have seen\u2019. Thus, Murgia links mothering to the labour of giving not only birth but also death. \u2018Labour\u2019 connotes hard, grinding work \u2013 and things move slowly in the novel, as 1stBookReview<\/em> asserts, \u2018matching the slow pace of rural Sardinian life in the fifties\u2019 and amplifying \u2018the heavy weight of silence\u2019 (originally in English). To balance such weight, the short chapters, the overall concision (164 pages in total), plus the frequent use of colorful dialect add up to an efficient rhythm, neither too heavy nor too light. As a critic from Il Borgo dei fogli<\/em> puts it, while the theme remains heavy, the novel doesn\u2019t make us feel weighed down (see the related Assisted Lab<\/em> entry about a Tom\u00e1s Gonz\u00e1lez novel that also plays with slowing down time). Although The<\/em> Times<\/em> calls the plot \u2018simple\u2019, the story doesn\u2019t always move linearly. Key revelations of character motives emerge as flashbacks: why Bonaria never married, why she adopted Maria, and why she believes she must help someone die when \u2018the unlawful act would be doing nothing\u2019. This last flashback is the closest we get to an origin story: a young Bonaria witnesses a post-partum complication and the women assisting the birth are unable to stop the new mother\u2019s hemorrhage, so they consider helping end her suffering. It\u2019s only when Nicola requests her help that Bonaria questions if she is still capable of \u2018distinguishing between mercy and crime\u2019 \u2013 and their debate calls to mind Ram\u00f3n Sampedro\u2019s treatise on the ethics of euthanasia (see related Assisted Lab <\/em>entry on Sampedro\u2019s memoir).<\/p>

The Times<\/em> argues that Murgia\u2019s recovery of the Sardinian legend at a time when Italy was reassessing its history (in the context of the 150th anniversary of Italy\u2019s unification) was responsible for the book\u2019s appeal \u2013 leading to its being translated into dozens of languages and snatching 7 literary prizes, including the prestigious Premio Campiello. In fact, during the Campiello award ceremony, the jury\u2019s president declared that \u2018the faith in writing as a tool for recovering and reclaiming our past has won\u2019. Yet, the very question of whether the accabadora really existed remains unsettled, because her work would have been done in secrecy \u2013 only men were sanctioned to kill, and the Church monopolized the power over life and death. According to scholars Gina Miele and Christina Welch cited in Atlas Obscura<\/em>, this could explain why, on one hand, the accabadora\u2019s \u2018killings were seen as socially good deaths\u2019, while, on the other, her \u2018ugly, old appearance in many folktales may be a manifestation of the Church\u2019s condemnation of her work\u2019 (originally in English). Though engaging with the past, the novel has remained contemporary and often cited in cultural and legal contexts. It has been revisited since 2019, when Italy\u2019s Constitutional Court decriminalized assisted suicide, and the federal and provincial governments started litigating about how to regulate the procedure. Tuscany led the way, passing a regional law in February 2025, with Sardinia following suit in September of the same year, but both regional laws were promptly challenged by the Meloni government. In November 2025, the Tuscan bill was partially upheld by the courts (see related entry on Daniele Pieroni\u2019s \u2018Trascolorare\u2019), whereas a ruling on the Sardinian law is still pending. On 10 August 2023, Murgia died at age 51, mourned and honoured both by those who validated and those who critiqued the views in Accabadora<\/em>, which La Stampa<\/em> called Murgia\u2019s most important novel. Meloni herself paid her respects publicly, hailing Murgia as \u2018a woman who fought to defend her ideas, albeit notoriously different from [hers]\u2019. In a long and reverent article following Murgia\u2019s death, the Catholic newspaper Avvenire<\/em> called her a \u2018talented writer and restless believer\u2019, recognizing the importance of her oeuvre, in spite of Murgia\u2019s unorthodox religious views; the article specifically praises Accabadora<\/em> \u2018from the narrative point of view\u2019, while taking issue with the \u2018problematic pious and humane dimension of euthanasia\u2019 that Avvenire<\/em> believes the novel sustains. Since 2018, a drama based on the novel has been staged, directed by Veronica Cruciani, and an operatic adaptation by Francesco Filidei is scheduled to premiere in 2026.<\/p>","cover":{"ratio":1.34875,"url":"https:\/\/assistedlab.ch\/media\/pages\/textual\/accabadora\/956a8ad829-1783113394\/biasi-c1919-processione-2410x-q90.jpg","caption":"Giuseppe Biasi, \u2018Processione\u2019, c. 1919"},"data":[{"title":"Title","value":"\u2018Accabadora\u2019 by Michela Murgia"},{"title":"Author","value":"Michela Murgia"},{"title":"Year","value":"2009"},{"title":"Language","value":"Italian"},{"title":"Tags","value":"Gender and Caregiving \u2022 Due Care Criteria \u2022 Loss of Capacity \u2022 Effects on Family \u2022 fiction"},{"title":"Legislative context","value":"Constitutional Court Sentence n. 204\/25, partially sustaining the Tuscan Regional Law n. 16, but not addressing the Sardinian bill, 4 November 2025 (Italy) \u2022 Sardinian Regional Law n. 26, establishing procedures and timeline for medically assisted suicide, 18 September 2025 (Italy) \u2022 Constitutional Court Sentence n. 242\/19 (aka \u2018Cappato\u2013Antoniani\u2019), decriminalizing assisted suicide, 25 September 2019 (Italy)"},{"title":"Author of entry","value":"Carlos A. Pittella"},{"title":"Last updated","value":"27.07.2026"}],"toggles":[{"title":"Reviews","list":[{"text":"\u2018Recensione di Accabadora\u2019, Le Idi di\u2026, 2023","link":"http:\/\/www.giuliocesarenews.it\/2023\/12\/recensione-di-accabadora\/","pathname":"giuliocesarenews.it"},{"text":"\u2018Ad Perpetuam Murgiae Memoriam\u2019, Il Borgo dei Fogli, Podcast episode 11, 2023","link":"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/podcast\/11-ad-perpetuam-murgiae-memoriam\/id1692097550?i=1000634592166","pathname":"podcasts.apple.com"},{"text":"R. Rizzitelli, \u2018Accabadora di M. Murgia\u2019, Societ\u00e0 Psicoanalitica Italiana, 2023","link":"https:\/\/www.spiweb.it\/cultura-e-societa\/accabadora-di-m-murgia-recensione-di-r-rizzitelli\/","pathname":"spiweb.it"},{"text":"\u2018Accabadora by Michela Murgia\u2019, 1stBookReview, 2016","link":"https:\/\/www.1stbookreview.com\/accabadora-by-michela-murgia\/","pathname":"1stbookreview.com"},{"text":"Paul Bailey, \u2018Accabadora, by Michela Murgia, trans. Silvester Mazzarella\u2019, The Independent, 2011","link":"https:\/\/www.the-independent.com\/arts-entertainment\/books\/reviews\/accabadora-by-michela-murgia-trans-silvester-mazzarella-6270413.html","pathname":"the-independent.com"},{"text":"Lindsay Duguid, \u2018Accabadora by Michela Murgia\u2019, The Times, 2011","link":"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/travel\/destinations\/europe-travel\/italy\/accabadora-by-michela-murgia-9h3n09mcsw2","pathname":"thetimes.com"}]},{"title":"Media citations","list":[{"text":"Emma Cieslik, \u2018Death as a Woman: The Accabadora of Sardinia\u2019, Atlas Obscura, 2024","link":"http:\/\/www.atlasobscura.com\/articles\/death-as-a-woman-accabadora-sardinia","pathname":"atlasobscura.com"},{"text":"\u2018The Right Person at the Wrong Time \u2013 Michela Murgia (1971-2023)\u2019, Crooked Timber, 2023","link":"https:\/\/crookedtimber.org\/2023\/09\/01\/51778\/","pathname":"crookedtimber.org"},{"text":"\u2018Da Accabadora a Tre Ciotole, Murgia nei suoi libri\u2019, ANSA, 2023","link":"https:\/\/www.ansa.it\/sito\/notizie\/cultura\/libri\/2023\/08\/11\/da-accabadora-a-tre-ciotole-murgia-nei-suoi-libri_0bc7deb0-23ea-4709-8f1e-0b6a84f41f35.html","pathname":"ansa.it"},{"text":"\u2018Michela Murgia \u00e8 morta, addio alla scrittrice paladina dei diritti\u2019, La Stampa, 2023","link":"https:\/\/www.lastampa.it\/cultura\/2023\/08\/10\/news\/michela_murgia_morta-12991563\/","pathname":"lastampa.it"},{"text":"\u2018Accabadora tradotto in cinese \u2013 Murgia: A marzo sar\u00f2 Pechino\u2019, La Nuova Sardegna, 2016","link":"https:\/\/www.lanuovasardegna.it\/regione\/2016\/01\/06\/news\/accabadora-tradotto-in-cinese-murgia-a-marzo-saro-pechino-1.12732465","pathname":"lanuovasardegna.it"},{"text":"\u2018Michela Murgia Vince Il Campiello\u2019, Corriere della Sera, 2010","link":"https:\/\/www.corriere.it\/cultura\/10_settembre_04\/campiello-premio-letteratura-murgia_856f4070-b85c-11df-927f-00144f02aabe.shtml","pathname":"corriere.it"}]},{"title":"Interest Group citations","list":[{"text":"\u2018Tertulia literaria Sol: La acabadora (Michela Murgia, 2009)\u2019, Derecho a Morir Dignamente, 2026","link":"https:\/\/derechoamorir.org\/eventos\/tertulia-literaria-sol-la-acabadora-michela-murgia_2009\/","pathname":"derechoamorir.org"},{"text":"\u2018Addio a Michela Murgia, Scrittrice di Talento e Credente Inquieta\u2019, Avvenire, 2023","link":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20231210133525\/https:\/\/www.avvenire.it\/agora\/pagine\/e-morta-la-scrittrice-michela-murgia","pathname":"web.archive.org"},{"text":"\u2018The Problematic Catholic Funeral of Controversial Author Michela Murgia\u2019, Catholic World Report, 2023","link":"https:\/\/www.catholicworldreport.com\/2023\/09\/11\/the-problematic-catholic-funeral-of-controversial-author-michela-murgia\/","pathname":"catholicworldreport.com"},{"text":"\u2018Dialogo sul fine vita con la scrittrice Michela Murgia\u2019, Socrem Bologna, 2019","link":"https:\/\/www.socrem.bologna.it\/dialogo-fine-vita-con-michela-murgia\/","pathname":"socrem.bologna.it"}]},{"title":"Legal and Paralegal citations","list":[{"text":"Consiglio regionale della Sardegna, \u2018Nota stampa della seduta n. 86\u2019, 16 September 2025","link":"https:\/\/www.consregsardegna.it\/nota-stampa-della-seduta-n-86-2\/","pathname":"consregsardegna.it"}]}]}