Fabrizio Venerandi’s Manuale di letteratura elettronica [Venerandi 2024] is available only in e-book format and written entirely in Italian. It aims to introduce the general public to the phenomenon of electronic literature, with a particular focus on text adventures and narrative video games. Its publication by Argolibri is no coincidence: The publishing house, which has been involved for years in organizing a course on electronic literature taught by Venerandi himself, sees this volume − edited by Vittoria Rubini and with an introduction by Roberta Iadevaia − as a systematization of the experiences gained in Venerandi’s educational context. The choice of digital format only, consistent with the author’s editorial line, takes on the value of a political statement that emphasizes the born-digital nature of the e-lit works discussed in the volume. Venerandi’s theoretical position is rooted in the author’s many years of experience in creative practice and workshop teaching.[1] Venerandi, in addition to being one of the leading Italian exponents of electronic poetry [Venerandi 2016], has co-directed with Maria Cecilia Averame a publishing house specialized in electronic publishing, Quintadicopertina, and has collaborated with Alessandro Uber on the Necromicon project.[2] The manual is therefore a mature synthesis of prior experiences and explicitly refers to a second volume for a more in-depth study of the genre of electronic poetry.

The manual explicitly positions itself in the field of electronic literature, with a focus on Italian experiences. The use of the term “electronic” may seem secondary to a non-specialist audience, but the choice is absolutely relevant to the affirmation of the genre in Italy.[3] The volume, in fact, occupies an original position within the tradition of studies on electronic literature, clearly distinguishing itself from the two main contributions in previous volumes dedicated to the Italian context, both of which are very recent for a discipline that has decades of critical and literary history at international level. Iadevaia’s work, written in Italian, offers a systematic reconstruction of the history of electronic literature according to a predominantly diachronic approach [Iadevaia 2021]. Similarly, Emanuela Patti’s work, written in English, adopts a theoretical framework based on Umberto Eco’s concept of the “open work” and fits fully into the international academic debate [Patti 2022]. Venerandi’s approach is different: Following a historical perspective, he does not pursue a strictly academic intent but rather focuses on sharing his personal experience as a video game player, teacher, and non-traditional author.

The motivation behind the project is already made clear in Roberta Iadevaia’s “Preface,” in which she observes that in Italy, critical resources dedicated to e-lit are still limited [Venerandi 2024, 6]. Consequently, the manual does not aspire to be exhaustive or historically comprehensive, but succeeds in offering a reasoned overview of the works, issues, and categories that the author considers most significant, leaving it up to the reader to use the manual's tools to navigate the discipline − and, possibly, to integrate it into other fields. In the author’s view, it is necessary for electronic literature, with its evolution and related methods of interpretation, to move beyond the experimental and strictly academic field and find a wider audience in the new media forms that have been used by the general public for years, namely video games. From this perspective, we can understand the need to clarify some specialist terminology beforehand: Venerandi defines key terms such as “reading”, “reader” and “new literature”, showing how the digital experience requires a rethinking of traditional critical categories [Venerandi 2024, 22]. Such redefinition also allows us to identify the constants of this new language, referring to “electronic,” “non-linear,” “multimedia,” and “interactive” literature, categories articulated according to the nature of the device, the methods of accessing content, and the degree of intervention required from the reader [Venerandi 2024, 23].

In this context, some central questions emerge: How does digital fiction reformulate the categories of author, reader, and work? To what extent can the narrative form be considered “finished” if the text is designed to change according to the user’s choices? Then again: Is it possible to think of a unified story if the author no longer controls the narrative path and the fictional world can contain a multiplicity of possible trajectories? The writer, in fact, no longer produces a complete story, but rather a potential reality that the reader manipulates, activating different narrative paths or, in extreme cases, worlds that can exist even without the writer’s presence. In short, we are witnessing the formation of a new digital rhetoric, and awareness of that is essential in order to situate ourselves in a circle of digital creation-interpretation-consumption.

Structurally, the Manuale di letteratura elettronica is divided into 55 short chapters, organized according to a logical sequence that systematically alternates case studies and theoretical frameworks, reflecting its stated purpose: to provide aspiring authors and readers of e-lit with practical tools for understanding − and above all, creating − digital fiction. The internal coherence of the volume is guaranteed by a highly pragmatic structure; in fact, the modular format adopted allows for non-linear consultation that reflects the hypertextual and nodal nature of the narrative forms discussed. The manual is also accompanied by a rich iconographic apparatus, consisting mainly of screenshots and photos of game sessions selected by the author, which plays a decisive role not only in terms of illustration but also in terms of methodology: Multimedia is not presented as an accessory but as an essential component of the creation and enjoyment of electronic literature. The absence of a critical bibliography − replaced by a final Ludography that lists the numerous video games discussed in alphabetical order − signals a desire to break away from traditional academic models, a choice consistent with the author’s goal in dissemination.

The first part of the manual offers a broad overview of works across genres, eras, and forms of expression, showing how video game language has developed mature narrative forms. Text adventures, which began in Italy with Enrico Colombini’s Avventura nel Castello (1982), are one of the earliest forms of interactive fiction, in which the progression of the story depends on the input of commands that can be interpreted by the parser. That constraint determines both the need to prepare a repertoire of keywords and possible actions, and the potential variability of the plot, since each environment enables different narrative paths. The redefinition of the narrative space also produces effects of descriptive repetition that are absent from traditional fiction, where linearity makes it unnecessary to repeat contextual information [Venerandi 2024, 41]. From such perspective, the text adventure takes the form of a “narrative database” queried by the reader through a character who performs the required actions and returns textual feedback [Venerandi 2024, 42]. The author’s analysis integrates a historical-technological reconstruction of the genre with examples of game sessions, showing how the evolution of the human-machine interface has led to increasingly sophisticated parsers, in line with what has already been discussed by Francesco Cordella in Flamel (2002). The process promotes a progressive gamification of the computer experience, aiming to make computers accessible even to users without advanced technical skills. At the same time, interactive fiction, having left the commercial market, becomes an underground tool for hybrid practices of authorship and self-publishing, as demonstrated by the international community linked to Emily Short and the Inform language [Venerandi 2024, 44–46].

The Inform tradition is joined by MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), which introduce a significant deviation from interactive fiction: The narrative no longer depends on the individual reader, as multiple users participate simultaneously in the same textual world [Venerandi 2024, 91–92]. The experience of Necromicon, the first Italian MUD developed by Alessandro Uber and Fabrizio Venerandi himself, shows that the fabula is not predefined. In fact, the persistent world, populated by programmed characters, generates autonomous events, variable missions, and collective micro-narratives produced by the actions and dialogues of users. In the MUD model, the roles of author, reader, and player tend to overlap, while the main goal becomes the creation of a narrative community rather than a finished story.

Venerandi therefore outlines a non-linear genealogy that proceeds by thematic clusters, using exemplary works to highlight broader methodological issues. Some titles allow one to observe the relationship between interface and temporality: Lifeline (2015), which synchronizes the narrative time with real time, or The Longing (2019), which radicalizes that principle by imposing a game duration of four hundred days. Other cases illustrate the progressive replacement of the parser with more immediate models, as in graphic adventures derived from textual logic − The Gate (2000) is an example − or in retro reinterpretations such as Thimbleweed Park (2017), which combines a point-and-click interface with a preselected command structure. A significant part of the discussion also concerns database-oriented forms and hypertext fiction, which are useful for clarifying structural aspects and preservation issues typical of electronic literature: Portal (1986), with its unreliable Homer artificial intelligence, or Colombini’s Locusta Temporis (2010), created in EPUB2 using the M.E.D.U.S.A. system, which shows how interaction with the text itself can become the driving force behind narrative progression. Similarly, works such as Today I Die (2008), an electronic poem in Flash, raise crucial issues in Digital Humanities such as preservation, format obsolescence, and code accessibility.

Starting from the above roots, the resulting path of electronic literature highlights the maturation of video game language towards hybrid forms that combine symbolism, aesthetics, and game mechanics. Titles such as Limbo (2010), Gris (2018), and Life Is Strange (2015) show an increasingly conscious use of the medium to address complex issues such as depression, isolation, grief, bullying, and adolescence, while Riot (2017), Papers, Please (2013), and This War of Mine (2014) translate ethical and political choices into actual narrative acts.[4] Finally, the volume’s journey finds its mature expressive outlet in works such as Kentucky Route Zero (2013–2020) and Disco Elysium (2019), where text, interaction, sound, and meta-narrative devices converge in narrative forms that are fully aware of the medium’s literary potential. From an overall perspective, the value of Venerandi’s contribution lies not in a simple overview of titles, but in his ability to interrelate different phenomena to show the continuity, transformations, and derivations of interactive language from its textual origins to the most recent experiments.

The second part of the manual is more practical and highlights the central role of coding in e-lit production, emphasizing both the risks of obsolescence in the use of tools such as Twine and the need to master basic languages such as HTML to guarantee the author’s autonomy. In discussing creative production tools, Venerandi distinguishes between the use of general-purpose languages − Python, Java, C, HTML − and specialized authoring environments, such as Inform for interactive fiction and Twine for hypertext fiction [Venerandi 2024, 287]. The design of an interactive work requires the preparation of variables, verbs, and logical conditions that anticipate the reader’s actions, constructing a network of narrative atoms that the player helps to actualize. In that context, recent applications of artificial intelligence for the generation of ramified narratives, such as Latitude’s AI Dungeon, are particularly significant. The formal choices − second person, historical present, multiple-choice, map, or multi-fable structures − bring interactive fiction closer to the logic of video games, while visual novels find an advanced Python-based framework in Ren'Py. In the chapter “I luoghi della letteratura elettronica” (The places of electronic literature) dedicated to institutional geography, the author acknowledges the role of the Electronic Literature Organization in confronting technological obsolescence through preservation strategies, while noting that its production is often oriented toward and by academia [Venerandi 2024, 309–311]. The manual therefore focuses on narrative video games from the last decade, considered part of a parallel and fully legitimate tradition of electronic literature. Venerandi concludes by defining the volume as a handwritten cookbook, reflecting a field in constant transformation, in what the author calls a form of digital naturalism, where the writer is a programmer of environments, actions, and identities, an approach that aims to emancipate video games from mere entertainment and recognize them as a new art form of the millennium [Venerandi 2024, 312].

Venerandi’s Manuale di letteratura elettronica adopts a conversational and accessible style: The language is clear, tailored to the non-specialist reader and free of unnecessary technicalities, while the first-person narrative gives the text an experiential touch that reflects the very nature of electronic literature, which is constituted by the interaction between the subjectivity of those who produce it and those who consume it.

From a critical point of view, one of the main strengths of the manual lies precisely in its modular and hypertextual style of presentation. Venerandi manages, almost paradoxically, to create electronic literature while describing it: His approach makes it particularly effective for a young audience, less aware of the history of computing and video games, but sensitive to the forms of multimodal narration that characterize contemporary life. However, some limitations emerge, especially when considering the potential dialogue with the academic community: The section dedicated to institutional sites of e-lit, such as the Electronic Literature Organization, is concise, while citations are rare, more illustrative than scientific, and not accompanied by a final bibliography, the absence of which reduces the possibility of integration within a specialist audience, though this was not among the author's stated aims. Nevertheless, the significance of the volume remains valuable as a catalog of works, rather than as a theoretical manual, and as an explicit invitation to “play” with literature before analyzing it.

In conclusion, it is clear that the experiences, tools, and narrative strategies of video games offer valuable resources for education, while also engaging in constant dialogue with issues that Digital Humanities have been exploring for decades, such as reflection on the digital medium, archiving and preservation problems, and text modeling. This review therefore aims to draw the attention of the DH community, both academic and non-academic, toward the need to recognize video games as one of the main laboratories of new electronic literature and a strategic means for the dissemination of digital culture.