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Winners of the Primio Strega - The Strega Prize
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1947-19501. 1947 Ennio Flaiano 5 March 1910–20 November 1972, aged 62
Tempo di uccidere / The Short Cut or A Time To Kill
Ennio Flaiano was an Italian screenwriter, playwright, novelist, journalist, and drama critic. Best known for his work with Federico Fellini, Flaiano co-wrote 10 screenplays with the Italian director, including La Strada (1954), La Dolce Vita (1960), and 8½. Flaiano wrote for Cineillustrato, Oggi, Il Mondo, Il Corriere della Sera, Omnibus and other prominent Italian newspapers and magazines. In 1947, he won the Strega Prize for his novel, Tempo di uccidere (variously translated as Miriam, A Time to Kill, and The Short Cut). Set in Ethiopia during the Italian invasion (1935–36), the novel tells the story of an Italian officer who rapes and subsequently kills an Ethiopian woman and is then tormented by the memory of his act. The barren landscape around the protagonist hints at an interior emptiness and meaninglessness. This is one of the few Italian literary works dealing with the misdeeds of Italian colonialism in Eastern Africa. A movie adaptation with the same title, directed by Giuliano Montaldo and starring Nicolas Cage, was released in 1989.
2. 1948 Vincenzo Cardarelli 1 May 1887–18 June 1959, aged 72
Villa Tarantola
Vincenzo Cardarelli, pseudonym of Nazareno Caldarelli was an Italian poet and journalist. Cardarelli was born in Corneto, Lazio, in a family of Marche origin. In 1906, when he had moved to Rome, he began his career as a journalist. He won two literary awards, including the 1929 Premio Bagutta for Il Sole a picco and the 1948 Premio Strega for Villa Tarantola.
3. 1949 Giambattista Angioletti 27 November 1896–3 August 1961, aged 64
La memoria
Giovanni Battista Angioletti was an Italian writer and journalist. Angioletti was born in Milan in 1896 and was gifted with a lively and reflective intelligence. His plans to qualify as an engineer were interrupted by the outbreak of WWI; at the end of the conflict he decided instead to embark upon a literary career, combining work as a journalist with writing fiction. In 1928 Il giorno del giudizio became the first winner of the Premio Bagutta. In 1929 he became editor of the magazine Italia letteraria and started to write for the Corriere della Sera; in the following year he founded the literary review Trifalco. From 1934 he spent much of his time abroad, lecturing at the universities of Dijon and Besançon and acting as director of the institutes of Italian culture in Prague and Paris. He remained in France for much of WW2, returning to Italy only in 1945. Here he resumed his role at Italia letteraria, (now published as Fiera Letteraria) and continued to write fiction, winning the 1949 Strega Prize with La memoria, published by Bompiani. In the decade following he played a part in the birth of Italy's Radio 3 and directed a number of cultural programmes for the station. Angioletti died in Santa Maria la Bruna, near Naples in 1961 at the age of 64. In the previous year his career had been crowned with the award of the Viareggio Prize for I grandi ospiti.
4. 1950 Cesare Pavese 9 September 1908–27 August 1950, aged 41
La bella estate / The Beautiful Summer
Cesare Pavese was an Italian novelist, poet, short story writer, translator, literary critic, and essayist. He was born in Santo Stefano Belbo, starting infant classes there, but the rest of his education was in Turin. As a young man of letters, Pavese had a particular interest in English literature, graduating from the University of Turin with a thesis on the poetry of Walt Whitman, and translated several English works. Pavese moved in antifascist circles. In 1935 he was arrested and convicted for having letters from a political prisoner. A year later Pavese returned to Turin, working as an editor and translator. He was living in Rome when he was called up into the fascist army, but due to asthma he spent 6 months in a military hospital. Meanwhile, German troops occupied the streets and most of his friends had left to fight as partisans though Pavese took no part in the armed struggle taking place in that area. After WW2 Pavese joined the Italian Communist Party, working on the party's newspaper. Depression, the failure of a love affair and political disillusionment led him to his suicide by an overdose in 1950, the same year he had won the Strega Prize.
1951-19605. 1951 Corrado Alvaro 15 April 1895–11 June 1956, aged 61
Quasi una vita
Corrado Alvaro was an Italian journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays. His first success was Gente in Aspromonte (Revolt in Aspromonte), which examined the exploitation of rural peasants by greedy landowners in Calabria, and is considered by many critics to be his masterpiece. Alvaro graduated with a degree in literature in 1919 at the University of Milan and started work as a journalist and literary critic. He served as an officer in the Italian army during WWI and was wounded in both arms. After the war he worked for an anti-Fascist paper. In 1926 he published his first novel L'uomo nel labirinto (Man in the Labyrinth), which explored the growth of Fascism in Italy in the 1920s. Due to his political views, Alvaro was forced to leave Italy and travelled Europe, the Middle East, and the Soviet Union in the 1930s After WW2 Alvaro returned to Italy working in prominent daily papers. He was elected secretary of the Italian Association of Writers in 1947, a post he held until his death in Rome in 1956.
6. 1952 Alberto Moravia 28 November 1907–26 September 1990, aged 92
I racconti
Alberto Moravia, pseudonym of Alberto Pincherle, was a journalist and author known for his fictional portrayals of social alienation and loveless sexuality. He was a major figure in 20th-c. Italian literature. Moravia contracted tuberculosis of the bone at the age of 8, but, during the years in which he was confined to bed and in sanatoriums, he studied French, German, and English; read Giovanni Boccaccio, Ludovico Ariosto, William Shakespeare, and Molière; and began to write. Moravia was a journalist for a time in Turin and a foreign correspondent in London. His first novel, Gli indifferenti (1929; Time of Indifference), is a scathingly realistic study of the moral corruption of a middle-class mother and two of her children. It became a sensation. Most of Moravia’s works deal with emotional aridity, isolation, and existential frustration and express the futility of either sexual promiscuity or conjugal love as an escape. Critics have praised the author’s stark, unadorned style, his psychological penetration, his narrative skill, and his ability to create authentic characters and realistic dialogue.
7. 1953 Massimo Bontempelli 12 May 1878-21 July 1960, aged 82
L'amante fedele / The Faithful Lover
Massimo Bontempelli was a poet, playwright, novelist and composer. He was influential in developing and promoting the literary style known as magical realism. Bontempelli graduated the University of Turin in 1903. He taught school for 7 years, writing on the side, then turned to journalism, serving as a war correspondent in WW1. After the war, he settled in Milan. In 1926, he helped found the journal "900". During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Bontempelli had ties to fascism. He served as a secretary of the fascist writers' union and spent time abroad lecturing on Italian culture. However, in 1938 he refused to accept a university post formerly held by a Jewish professor and was kicked out of the Fascist party, drifting towards Communism. After WW2 Bontempelli won a Senate race on the Popular Democratic Front ticket but the results were voided when his fascist ties were discovered.In 1953, Bontempelli's "L'amante Fedele" won the Strega Prize. After years of declining health, Bontempelli died in Rome in 1960.
8. 1954 Mario Soldati 17 November 1906–19 June 1999, aged 92
Le lettere da Capri / The Capri Letters
Mario Soldati was a writer and film director. He worked with leading Italian actresses, such as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. A native of Turin, Soldati attended the Liceo Sociale, and finished secondary school at age 17, then studied humanities at the University of Turin. The University was a hotbed of intellectual activity. He later studied History of Art at the University of Rome. He started publishing novels in 1929, and achieved the widest notice with America primo amore, 1935. He won literary awards for his work, most notably the Strega Prize for Lettere da Capri in 1954. Also interested in film, Soldati began directing in 1938. His most well-known films are Piccolo mondo antico (1941) and Malombra (1942) with Isa Miranda, both based on novels by Antonio Fogazzaro. These two films belong to the early 1940s movement in Italian cinema known as calligrafismo.
9. 1955 Giovanni Comisso 3 October 1895–21 January 1969, aged 73
Un gatto attraversa la strada
Giovanni Comisso was an important writer of the 20th c. In 1915, he enlisted in the telegraph Corps of Engineers in WW1. He travelled extensively on behalf of a number of newspapers, living for long periods in Paris. In 1929, he visited China, Japan and Russia before settling in Italy. His later work was filled with descriptions of despair, disappointments, anxieties and dislikes together with many ironic and bitter descriptions of man’s failings.
10. 1956 Giorgio Bassani 4 March 1916–13 April 2000, aged 84
Cinque storie ferraresi: dentro le mura / Within the Walls
Giorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual. Born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico (a doctor), brother Paolo, and sister Jenny. Music had been his first great passion and he considered a career as a pianist; however literature soon became the focus of his artistic interests. In 1935 he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bologna. Despite the anti-Semitic race laws, he was able to graduate in 1939. As a Jew in 1939, however, work opportunities were now limited and he became a schoolteacher in the Jewish School of Ferrara in via Vignatagliata. In 1940 his first book published using the pen name Giacomo Marchi to evade the race laws. He became a political activist and was arrested May 1943, but released 26 July, the day after Benito Mussolini was ousted. A week later he married Valeria Sinigallia, whom he had met playing tennis. They moved to Florence for a brief period, living under assumed names, then at the end of the year, to Rome, where he would spend the rest of his life. He received the Charles Veillon [fr], the Strega, the Campiello, the Viareggio and the Nelly Sachs prizes. Bassani died in 2000 and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ferrara.
11. 1957 Elsa Morante 18 August 1912–25 November 1985, aged 73
L'isola di Arturo / Arturo's Island
Elsa Morante was a novelist, poet, translator, and children's books author. Her novel La storia (History) is included in the Bokklubben World Library List of 100 Best Books of All Time. Elsa Morante was born in Rome in 1912. Her mother came from a Jewish family in Modena. Except for a brief period during WW2, she resided in Rome until her death in 1985. She began writing short stories in the mid-1930s. Some were published in various publications. Her first book was published in 1941. In the same year she married fellow novelist and film critic Alberto Moravia. During the German occupation of Italy at the end of WW2, they fled Rome for Southern Lazio due to their Jewish heritage. Morante cultivated a love for music, books and cats. Southern Italy is also used as the backdrop for much of her work. Most of her greatest works are shaped by her choices and experiences in life and are reflected in her protagonists.
12. 1958 Dino Buzzati 14 October 1906–28 January 1972, aged 65
Sessanta racconti
Dino Buzzati-Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist. In 1924, he enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Milan. As he was completing his studies in law, he was hired, at the age of 22, by the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he would remain until his death. It is often said that his journalistic background lent realism to even his most fantastic tales. He began writing fiction in 1933. His works of fiction include five novels, theatre and radio plays, librettos, numerous books of short stories and poetry. Lemony Snicket wrote an introduction and reader's companion to a 2005 English edition of his children's book La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia. His Sessanta racconti short-story collection, which won the Strega Prize in 1958, features elements of science fiction, fantasy and horror throughout.
13. 1959 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 23 December 1896-23 July 1957, aged 60
Il Gattopardo / The Leopard
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was an Italian writer and the last Prince of Lampedusa. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo, which is set in his native Sicily during the Risorgimento. A taciturn and solitary man, he spent a great deal of his time reading and meditating. He moved to Rome in 1915, drafted into the army, taken prisoner in a POW camp in Hungary, and succeeded in escaping. He continued his pre-war studies of foreign literature, and drafted the ideas for his novel The Leopard. In 1957 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died in Rome. His novel was published posthumously in 1958. The main-belt asteroid 14846 Lampedusa is named after him.
14. 1960 Carlo Cassola 17 March 1917–29 January 1987, aged 69
La ragazza di Bube / Bebo's Girl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qCGX...
Carlo Cassola was an Italian Neorealist novelist who portrayed the landscapes and the ordinary people of rural Tuscany in simple prose. The lack of action and the emphasis on detail in his books caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of the French nouveau roman, or antinovel. His book La Ragazza di Bube was adapted into a film in 1963. He also dubbed the voice of Stan Laurel for Italian and French films.
1961-197015. 1961 Raffaele La Capria b. 3 October 1922
Ferito a morte / The Mortal Wound
Raffaele La Capria (born 3 October 1922) is a novelist and screenwriter. La Capria was born in Naples, where he was to spend the formative years of his life. There he graduated in law, before staying in France, England and the US and then settling in Rome. He contributed to the cultural pages of the Corriere della Sera and was co-director of the literary journal Nuovi Argomenti. A particular interest was English poetry of the 1930s, and he translated several works. In the 1950s he wrote and produced a number of radio programmes. In 1961 his novel Ferito a morte won the prestigious Premio Strega. He also worked as co-scriptwriter on a number of Francesco Rosi's films. In September 2001 he received a Premio Campiello lifetime achievement award and in 2005 L'estro quotidiano was selected as the winner of the Viareggio Prize for fiction. He is widower of the actress Ilaria Occhini. They had been together for 58 years.
16. 1962 Mario Tobino 16 January 1910–11 December 1991, aged 81
Il clandestino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6RXq...
Mario Tobino was a poet, writer and psychiatrist. A prolific writer, he began as a poet but later wrote mostly novels. His works are characterised by a strong autobiographical inspiration, and usually deal with social and psychological themes. Mario Tobino completed his degree in medicine in 1936, and began treating people with mental disabilities. He went to Libya in June 1940, working as a doctor there until October 1941, when war broke out he had to flee. Tobino was a doctor in the Mental Hospital of Lucca for over 40 years. His participation in the liberation efforts as a partisan developed him immensely as a writer, and morphed into the book Clandestino (1962), winner of the Strega. Tobino was a tireless writer, and was awarded several literary prizes. He received the Premio Pirandello on 10 December 1991 in Agrigento. The next day he died.
17. 1963 Natalia Ginzburg 14 July 1916–7 October 1991, aged 75
Lessico famigliare / Family Lexicon
Natalia Ginzburg was an author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years, WW2, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, and won the Strega and Bagutta Prizes. An activist in the 1930s she belonged to the Italian Communist Party. In 1983, she was elected to Parliament from Rome as an independent. Ginzburg spent most of her youth in Turin. Her father was born into a Jewish Italian family, and her mother was Catholic whilst she was raised atheist. Their home was a centre of cultural life, as her parents invited intellectuals, activists and industrialists. At age 17 in 1933, Ginzburg published her first story, I bambini. After her marriage, she used the name "Natalia Ginzburg" (occasionally spelled "Ginzberg") on most subsequent publications. Her first novel was published under the pseudonym "Alessandra Tornimparte" in 1942, during Fascist Italy's most anti-Semitic period, when Jews were banned from publishing. Beginning in 1950, when Ginzburg married again and moved to Rome, she entered the most prolific period of her literary career. During the next 20 years, she published most of the works for which she is best known.
18. 1964 Giovanni Arpino 27 January 1927–10 December 1987, aged 60
L'ombra delle colline
Giovanni Arpino was a writer and journalist. Born in Pula-Croatia to Piedmontese parents, Arpino moved to Bra in the Province of Cuneo. Here he married Caterina Brero before moving to Turin where he would remain the rest of his life. He graduated in 1951 with a thesis on the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin and the following year made his literary debut. He took up sports journalism, writing for the dailies. Arpino also wrote plays, short stories, epigrams and stories for children. He won the Strega Prize in 1964, the Premio Campiello in 1972, and the 1980 Super Campiello. His novels are characterised by a dry and ironic style. His novel Un delitto d'onore became Pietro Germi’s highly regarded 1962 comedy Divorce, Italian Style, with Marcello Mastroianni. His story Il buio e il miele was made into two films: Profumo di donna, with Vittorio Gassman, and Scent of a woman, which earned Al Pacino an Academy Award for Best Actor. Arpino died in Turin in 1987. His links to his childhood town of Bra have been maintained by the establishment of a multifunctional cultural centre and of a prize for children's literature.
19. 1965 Paolo Volponi 6 February 1924–23 August 1994, aged 70
La macchina mondiale / The Worldwide Machine
Paolo Volponi was an Italian writer, poet, and politician. His first volume of poems was published in 1948. He studied law at Urbino University, where he graduated in 1947. His career as a writer was profoundly influenced by his meeting with the enlightened social thinker and industrialist Adriano Olivetti in 1950, for whom he worked as an assistant and then as director of social services at the Olivetti factory at Ivrea. He moved to Turin in 1972 to join Fiat and was appointed president of the Fondazione Agnelli in 1975 but was obliged to resign because of his open support for the Italian Communist Party. He was elected to the Italian Senate in 1983. His novels explore the ills of Italian society in the years of industrial expansion after WW2 while powerfully constructing a visionary fictional world. He won the Viareggio Prize, the Mondello Prize, and in 1991, became the first of only two Italian writers to win the Strega Prize twice.
20. 1966 Michele Prisco 18 January 1920–19 November 2003, aged 83
Una spirale di nebbia / A Spiral Of Mist
Michele Prisco was a journalist, critic, and novelist. His family provided the middle-class background central to many of his books. He studied law but decided to be a writer. In 1942 his first story was published. Before being mobilised, he worked for the Gazetta del Popolo de Turin, continuing to contribute from the front. In 1949 he published La provincia addormentata, which won the Strega gold medal for the best newcomer. In 1950 he won the Venezia Prize. In 1951 he married and moved to Naples, also working as a journalist and film critic. He was the vice secretary of the National Writers' Union for 10 years. His novel Una spirale di nebbia won the Strega Prize and was made into an acclaimed film.
21. 1967 Anna Maria Ortese 14 June 1914– 10 March 1998, aged 83
Poveri e semplici
Anna Maria Ortese was an author of novels, short stories, poetry, and travel writing. Born in Rome, she grew up between southern Italy and Tripoli, with her formal education ending at 13. Her first book, Angelici dolori, was issued in 1937. In 1953 her third collection, Il mare non bagna Napoli, won the coveted Viareggio Prize; thereafter, Ortese's stories, novels, and journalism received many of the most distinguished Italian literary awards, including the Strega and the Fiuggi. Although she lived for many years in Naples following WW2, she also resided in Milan, Rome, and for most of the last 20 years of her life in Rapallo. L'iguana (The Iguana) is Ortese’s best known work in English translation. Born in Rome, she was the 5th of 6 children. Her father worked for the Italian government, and the family moved frequently.[In January 1933, her brother, Emmanuel, with whom she was very close, died in Martinique, where his ship had docked. His death drove her to write, but it was only after her own death that her work received international recognition.
22. 1968 [author:Alberto Bevilacqua|723462] 27 June 1934–9 September 2013, aged 79
L'occhio del gatto
Alberto Bevilacqua was an writer, poet, and filmmaker. Bevilacqua's first collection of stories, The Dust on the Grass was published in 1955. Friendship Lost, his first book of poems, was published in 1961. Caliph, published in 1964, was his break-through novel. The protagonist, Irene Corsini, imbued with his own sweet and energetic temperament, is one of the strongest female characters in Italian literature. His novel This Kind of Love won the Campiello Prize in 1966. This Kind of Love won Best Film at Cannes. He directed 7 films between 1970-99. His 1970 film La califfa was entered into the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.
23. 1969 Lalla Romano 11 November 1906–26 June 2001, aged 94
Le parole tra noi leggere
Graziella "Lalla" Romano was an Italian novelist, poet, artist and journalist. She was born in Demonte in 1906 into a noteworthy Piedmontese family. She was originally interested in painting, and attended the University of Turin where she studied with art historian Lionello Venturi before Cesare Pavese piqued her interest in writing. She graduated with a degree in literature then worked as a librarian and teacher. In those years she started dating Giovanni Ermiglia and wrote several poems dedicated to him which have been collected together with other previous unpublished texts in Poesie per Giovanni (2007). During WW2 she joined the Resistance. After the war she became noted for writings that drew on personal and family experiences. Romano continued to paint throughout her life. In 2009, a retrospective of her paintings was held in Aosta. Her former house in Milan has been converted to a museum to preserve her work.
24. 1970 Guido Piovene 27 July 1907–12 November 1974, aged 67
Le stelle fredde / The Cold Stars
Guido Piovene was a writer and journalist. Born in Vicenza into a noble family, Piovene graduated in philosophy in Milan and then devoted himself to journalism, notably collaborating with Corriere della Sera, La Stampa and Il Tempo. He took part in the anti-fascist resistance with the Movimento Comunista d'Italia. According to Felice Chilanti's daughter, he wrote the statutes for its youth association COBA (so named in homage to Joseph Stalin's youthful pseudonym). His 1970 novel Le stelle fredde (The Cold Stars) won the Strega Prize. In 1974 he co-founded the newspaper Il Giornale with Indro Montanelli.
1971-198025. 1971 Raffaello Brignetti 21 September 1921-7 February 1978, aged 56
La spiaggia d'oro
Raffaello Brignetti, born in Isola del Giglio, was a writer. He grew up on the island of Elba where his father was a lighthouse keeper. He moved to Rome in the middle of the WW2 and spent a couple of years in German labour camps. He studied modern Italian literature at university, graduating in 1947. He embarked on a journalistic career in Rome, working in leading papers like Il Tempo, Il Giornale d'Italia and the Corriere della Sera. In 1961, a car crash left him paralysed, but the ensuing years saw him at his most productive. He won the Premio Viareggio for Il gabbiano azzurro (1967), and the Premio Strega for La spiaggia d'oro (1971). He lived for a long time in the Medici tower of Marciana Marina on Elba and then in the small apartment at the foot of the tower. He died in 1978. The Isola d'Elba-Raffaele Brignetti Literary Prize is named after him. Brignetti's work is noted for its familiarity with the sea and maritime life.
26. 1972 Giuseppe Dessì 7 August 1909-6 July 1977, aged 67
Paese d'ombre / The Forests of Norbio
Giuseppe Dessì was born in Cagliari and spent a difficult, restless adolescence in Villacidro, a town on the slopes of Monte Linas. The casual discovery of a walled library was the occasion for disordered philosophical and literary readings that brought him to the brink of madness. The intervention of his father and a belated regular course of studies brought in 1931 what had once been a rebellious student to the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy of the University of Pisa. There Dessì graduated in 1936. His first novel, San Silvano, marked in 1939 a happy debut of a writer who would confirm over time, the choice of a constant literary and cultural presence, consistent, courageous, discreet. He was hailed by Gianfranco Contini as the "Sardinian Proust". Forced to move continuously from a mixed career as a supervisor for studies, which ended in Rome, in the 1950s, he settled in Rome for the last two decades of his life.
27. 1973 Manlio Cancogni 16 July 1916-1 September 2015, aged 99
Allegri, gioventù
Manlio Cancogni was a writer, journalist and teacher. During his university years, he did his military service in the Alpine Corps in Bassano del Grappa (1936), but fell ill and ended up in hospital. In 1938 he graduated in law and subsequently in philosophy. In 1942 he published his first short stories. Then he was called to arms: he fought in the Greek Campaign and later on the Albanian front. After the Liberation he settled in Florence, where he was quite an active and prominent journalist. In the late 1960s he went to the US to teach Italian literature at Northampton 's Smith College, dividing his life between Massachusetts and Marina di Pietrasanta. Between the 1960s-80s his novels amassed a number of literary successes, prominent awards and accolades. From the 80s Cancogni devoted himself more to teaching, and it was the publisher Fazi who convinced him to return to writing. In 1997 Letters in Manhattan was released . It was an immediate success, followed by Il Mister (2000), set in the world of football. From 1943 Manlio Cancogni was married to Maria Vittoria Vittori, Florentine, with whom he lived the last years of his life in Fiumetto.
28. 1974 Guglielmo Petroni 30 October 1911-29 April 1993, aged 81
La morte del fiume
Guglielmo Petroni was a writer and painter. Semi-illiterate until adolescence, he began work in his father's shoe shop at the age of 10. He discovered painting and devoted himself. One of his first poems was awarded the La Cabala prize 1934. His first collection of poems written since 1929, Verses and Memory, was published in 1935. In 1938 he published a volume of short stories, Personalities of choice, and moved to Rome. During the war, he worked for the resistance. In 1944 he was arrested and handed over to the SS , locked up in the prison in via Tasso, tortured and sentenced to death, but saved at the last minute by the arrival of the allies. After the liberation he wrote a book born from that experience, The world is a prison. He mainly devoted himself to poetry, fiction, non-fiction, publishing various books, especially novels. He has had many awards, but he particularly cared about the Honoris Causa degree in recognition of his activity, received in 1985 by the Ancient University of Sassari. His archive is kept at the University of Pavia.
29. 1975 Tommaso Landolfi 9 August 1908–8 July 1979, aged 70
A caso
Tommaso Landolfi was a writer, translator and literary critic born into a noble family. His numerous grotesque tales and novels, sometimes on the border of speculative fiction, science fiction and realism, place him in a unique and unorthodox position among Italian writers. In 1932, he graduated in Russian language and literature at the University of Florence, and worked on various magazines and newspapers there and won a number of awards. He spent much of his life in Rome and at the family home at Pico, as well as the gaming houses of Sanremo and Venice, where he was an avid gambler. He died in Rome.
30. 1976 Fausta Cialente 29 November 1898–11 March 1994, aged 95
Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger
Fausta Terni Cialente was a novelist, journalist and political activist. She was born in Cagliari, Sardinia. In 1921 she married Enrico Terni (1876–1960), a musician and a composer from a Jewish family. Cialente's only daughter, Lionella (Lili), was born in 1923. Although based in Alexandria the family would holiday in Italy. Her first novel, Natalia, completed in 1927, featured the lesbian relationship of an unhappily married woman. It was published in Rome in 1930 and won the Dieci Savi Prize. When the initial print run of 3000 copies had been sold, her publisher wanted to print more but the censors in the Fascist regime asked for two sections of the book to be revised. She refused and the book was not reprinted but in 1932 a French translation was published in France. From 1940 she wrote antifascist pamphlets and made daily broadcasts from Radio Cairo against the Fascist regime in Italy. In 1947 she returned to Italy, living there until moving to England in 1984.
31. 1977 Fulvio Tomizza 26 January 1935–21 May 1999, aged 64
La miglior vita
Fulvio Tomizza was a writer born in Giurizzani di Materada in Istria, to a middle-class family. After high shool, he studied and worked in Yugoslavia (Faculty of humanities in Belgrade and the shooting of a movie in Ljubljana). Following the 1954 annexation of Zone B by Yugoslavia, Tomizza moved to Trieste. Most of his writing took place there, including 3 books set in the Istria of his youth. Other works include the figure of the bishop-reformer Pier Paolo Vergerio, the life of the exiled Istrians in Italy, some events concerning the Slovenian community in Italy (one couple mysteriously killed during WW2 in Trieste and the love story between an Italian official and a Slovenian girl; each story is based on facts, using original letters), some of his fiction was set in the Venetian territory and various articles (also effect of his trips as reporter).
32. 1978 Ferdinando Camon (born in Montagnana 1935
Un altare per la madre / Memorial
Ferdinando Camon is a contemporary writer, and has contributed to a number of Italian and foreign daily newspapers, including La Stampa, l'Unità, Avvenire, Le Monde and La Nación. Camon's best known work in English is his trilogy of fictional memoirs consisting of The Fifth Estate (Il Quinto Stato), Life Everlasting (La Vita Eterna), and Memorial (Un altare per la madre).
33. 1979 Primo Levi 31 July 1919–11 April 1987, aged 67
La chiave a stella / The Monkey's Wrench
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc8WP...
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian-Jewish writer and chemist, noted for his restrained and moving autobiographical account of and reflections on survival in the Nazi concentration camps. Levi was brought up in the small Jewish community in Turin, studied at the University of Turin, and graduated summa cum laude in chemistry in 1941. Two years later he joined friends in northern Italy in an attempt to connect with a resistance movement, but he was captured and sent to Auschwitz, working for a synthetic-rubber factory. Upon the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviets in 1945, Levi returned to Turin, where in 1961 he became the general manager of a factory producing paints, enamels, and synthetic resins for some 30 years. Levi’s first book, Se questo è un uomo (1947; If This Is a Man, or Survival in Auschwitz), demonstrated extraordinary qualities of humanity and detachment in its analysis of the atrocities he had experienced. His later autobiographical works, La tregua (1963; The Truce, or The Reawakening) and I sommersi e i salvati (1986; The Drowned and the Saved), are further reflections on his wartime experiences. Il sistema periodico (1975; The Periodic Table) is a collection of 21 meditations, each named for a chemical element, on the analogies between the physical, chemical, and moral spheres; of all of Levi’s works, it is probably his greatest critical and popular success. He also wrote poetry, novels, and short stories. A court in Turin ruled his death in 1987 a suicide, a verdict debated by some.
34. 1980 Vittorio Gorresio 18 July 1910–17 December 1982, aged 72
La vita ingenua
Vittorio Gorresio was a journalist-commentator and essayist. He was a political reporter who wanted to offer readers something more than mere information, albeit on a basis that was both timely and truthful, employing facts for which he was happy to serve as guarantor. He always took great care to provide an instantly "historical" portrayal of matters about which he wrote. This was achieved through an exceptionally broad and deep personal knowledge of the political world, but his work was also spiced with an elegant style of humour, and supported by a total independence in his judgements. He had been planning to become a diplomat, but this was financially impossible, so he fell back on journalism. Both career options were attractive because they seemed to offer the opportunity to travel the world. He began by sending articles to a newspapers, and succeeded in having some of his work published. Looking back on this period, he would later recall that he had written about "anything and everything." He continued to write almost til he died.
1981-199035. 1981 Umberto Eco 5 January 1932–19 February 2016, aged 84
Il nome della rosa / The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco OMRI was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. With English speakers, he is best known for his The Name of the Rose (1980), a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory, as well as Foucault's Pendulum, his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes. Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna.
36. 1982 Goffredo Parise 8 December 1929-31 August 1986, aged 56
Il sillabario n.2
"Poetry comes and goes, it lives and dies when it wants, not when we want it and it has no descendants. I'm sorry but that's how it is. A little like life, especially like love."
Goffredo Parise was a writer, journalist, screenwriter, essayist and poet. His work as a writer began with novels of a cold realism not without irony and moments of poetry. He then went on to narrate the grotesque life of the province, obtaining his first literary success with Il prete bello in 1954; thanks to the support of Eugenio Montale he acquired international notoriety. He collaborated with several publishing houses and carried out an intense activity as a journalist. His travel reports were noteworthy, in particular on China, Vietnam, and Biafra. In his latest novels he puts his finger on the industrial world and the alienation of modern man in a society often dominated by violence.
37. 1983 Mario Pomilio 14January 1921-Naples , 3 April 1990, aged 69
Il Natale del 1833
Mario Pomilio was a writer , essayist and journalist. In 1945 he graduated in Literature with a thesis on Luigi Pirandello's fiction, and continued his studies specialising with a research on poetic fury in the universities of Brussels and Paris. He was a teacher of literature in a Neapolitan high school, and obtained the Chair of Italian Poetic and Dramatic Literature at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples. From 1979 to 1984 he was professor of modern and contemporary Italian literature at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University Institute. In the last years of his life, it was difficult for him to write, due to the worsening of his rheumatoid arthritis, which also forced him to undergo surgery on his right hand. His archive is kept at the Center for studies on the manuscript tradition of modern and contemporary authors of the University of Pavia.
38. 1984 Pietro Citati b. 20 February 1930
Tolstoj / Tolstoy
Pietro Citati, born in Florence, is a writer and literary critic. He has written critical biographies of Goethe, Alexander the Great, Kafka, and Proust as well as a short memoir on his 30-year friendship with Italo Calvino. In Kafka, Pietro Citati has the great writer declare: "'I am like you, I am a man like you, I suffer and rejoice as you do, like a meticulous and buoyant angel, a being who lives far away in a world that did not belong even to him." From 1973 to 1988, he contributed to the cultural section of Corriere della Sera and has been the literary critic for la Repubblica between 1988 and 2011, before returning to write for Corriere della Sera.
39. 1985 Carlo Sgorlon 26 July 1930-25 December 2009, aged 79
L'armata dei fiumi perduti / Army Of The Lost Rivers
Carlo Sgorlon was an Italian writer and teacher. He was born in Cassacco, a tiny village near Udine, capital of Friuli, a region in Italy near the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. He spent much of his childhood in the countryside, where he attended primary school only rarely but came into daily contact with Friulian peasant life. The influence of his grandfather, a retired schoolmaster with a strong literary bent, and his grandmother, a practicing midwife steeped in local folklore, formed the basis of his love of literature and his reverence for ancient peasant traditions. He has written a number of novels in the dialect of Friuli, as well as 12 novels and numerous short stories in Italian. He has won over 40 awards.
40. 1986 Maria Bellonci 30 November 1902–13 May 1986, aged 83
Rinascimento privato / Private Renaissance
Maria Villavecchia Bellonci was a writer, historian and journalist, known especially for her biography of Lucrezia Borgia. She and Guido Alberti established the Strega Prize in 1947. Aged 19, Bellonci wrote Clio e le amazzoni, a novel that remained unpublished, but which circulated in Italian literary circles and introduced her to her future husband Goffredo Bellonci. Her subsequent works on historical subjects, based on rich and detailed research of extant primary documents, were lauded for their vivid reconstructions and psychological motivations of their characters from which the public obtained a credible picture of history stripped of legends and accretions over the centuries. Although these works were written in the genre of historical fiction, they were fully documented histories. Bellonci was inspired by Stendhal, and translated some of his work into Italian. Among her other translations are Alexandre Dumas' I tre moschettieri (1977) and Emile Zola's Nana (1955). Bellonci was actively involved in the promotion of Italian culture. Along with her husband and Guido Alberti, she established the literary Premio Strega in 1947.
41. 1987 Stanislao Nievo 30 June 1928- 13 July 2006, aged 77
Le isole del paradiso
Stanislao Nievo was a writer, journalist and director. It is said that in the world of travel writers there are those who write to travel and those who travel to write. There is no doubt that Stanislao Nievo belonged to both, or at least that he wrote and traveled to live. He had learned to travel early, wanting to understand, see and hear "even for those who have no time to see or hear". Thus, those first voyages of discovery were soon followed by Africa, Asia and 3 voyages to Oceania (Papua New Guinea, the middle course of the Sepik River, New Ireland, the Solomon Islands, the Fiji Islands, Tahiti): the first in 1961, the last in 1985. Two books were born from his travels and experiences lived there and from his imagination and creativity. One of which was his 1987 The Islands of Paradise (Premio Strega): a journey to discover a new homeland in the kingdom of nature, a story of emigration from Veneto to New Ireland two centuries ago.
42. 1988 Gesualdo Bufalino 15 November 1920–14 June 1996, aged 75
Le menzogne della notte / Night's Lies
Gesualdo Bufalino , was an Italian writer. Born in Comiso, Sicily, he studied literature and was a high-school professor in his hometown for most of his life. Immediately after WW2, he was hospitalised for tuberculosis; hence he drew the material for the novel Diceria dell'untore (The Plague Sower). The book was written in 1950 and completed in 1971, but was published only in 1981, thanks to Bufalino's friend and well-known writer Leonardo Sciascia who discovered his talents. Diceria dell'untore won the Premio Campiello. In 1988, the novel Le menzogne della notte (Night's Lies) won the Strega Prize. In 1990 he won the Nino Martoglio International Book Award. In his native town the Biblioteca di Bufalino ("Bufalino's Library") is now named after him.
43. 1989 Gesualdo Bufalino
La grande sera
See post 42
44. 1990 Sebastiano Vassalli 24 October 1941–26 July 2015, aged 73
La chimera / The Chimera
Sebastiano Vassalli was an author. He wrote the 2007 novel The Italian (L'italiano). Vassalli was born in Genoa, Italy in 1941. His mother was from Tuscany and father was from Lombardy. At a very young age, he was abandoned to relatives in Novara for some flour and oil. He went on to complete his BA in Milan. Soon after, Vassalli partnered with Cesare Musatti and wrote a book on Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Art which ultimately began his career as a notable author. He was very dedicated, especially when it came to writing. He wrote for La Repubblica, La Stampa and Corriere della Sera. His works are established based on historical research relating to the evolution of religion, politics, and gender differences. His novels are normally set in a certain historical context (Italy in the 1960s, the middle ages, and times of counter-fascism). He devotes his works around realistic representations of characters. Vassalli's works are known for their ability to represent the extremely simple yet effective nature of the characters of the novels in a fictional manner.
1991-200045. 1991 Paolo Volponi 6 February 1924–23 August 1994, aged 70
La strada per Roma
See post 19
46. 1992 Vincenzo Consolo 18 February 1933–21 January 2012, aged 78
Nottetempo, casa per casa
Vincenzo Consolo was an Italian writer. He was born in Sant'Agata di Militello, but resided in Milan from 1969 until his death. He began his literary career in 1963, but gained wider attention in 1976 with Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (The Smile of the Unknown Mariner) and went on to become an award-winning author. He won the Strega Prize with Nottetempo Casa per Casa (At night, from house to house) concerning 1920s Sicily and the rise of fascism. He also been given an honorary doctorate by the University of Palermo. In 1994 he was awarded with the Premio Internazionale Unione Latina. He died in Milan after a long illness.
47. 1993 Domenico Rea 8 September 1921-26 January 1994, aged 72
Ninfa plebea
Domenico Rea was a writer and journalist. In 1939 , at the age of 17, he took part in a literary competition launched by the magazine Omnibus , directed by Leo Longanesi. He did not win, but Longanesi praised him and encouraged him to continue writing. In 1944 he enrolled in the PCI and became secretary of the Nocera section. He frequented Naples and the young intellectuals, befriending Luigi Compagnone, his eternal "friend-enemy". Like cinematic neorealism and some figurative arts, his style interpreted the new reality that emerged from the war. Later Rea returned to this period with unflattering judgment. A restless writer, Rea lived in isolation without being able to be assimilated to any literary current, writing almost always about issues of environmental hardship, less committed to denouncing small and large daily injustices. His archive is kept at the Center for studies on the manuscript tradition of modern and contemporary authors of the University of Pavia.
48. 1994 Giorgio Montefoschi b. 2 July 1946
La casa del padre
Giorgio Montefoschi is an Italian writer, literary critic, and translator. He graduated in Literature at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" with a thesis on the writer Elsa Morante, and published his first novel Geneva in 1974. Since then he has been present in various interviews and inquiries in literary magazines on the art of the novel and more generally on fiction. He also collaborated on "Corriere della Sera" and on the TV program Mixer cultura. His novels are often set on the streets and in the circles of the bourgeoisie of Rome.
49. 1995 Mariateresa Di Lascia 3 January 1954–10 September 1994, aged 40
Passaggio in ombra
Mariateresa Di Lascia was a politician, writer, activist, human rights' supporter, and advocate of non-violence. Lascia was born in Rocchetta Sant'Antonio, Italy. She attended college in the University of Naples. She was studying of Medicine with the goal of becoming a lay missionary, however within 3 years she had become so involved in political activism that she left university. Di Lascia joined the Radical Party in 1975 and in 1982 she was elected as its national deputy secretary. Her initial activism was aimed at eliminating hunger. Di Lascia was also an environmental activist, acting to remove and prevent nuclear power in Italy. She proposed penitentiary reform in 1990 and the abolition of the death penalty in 1993. Di Lascia created a campaign to support victims of the war of the former Yugoslavia with Adriano Sofri in 1993. She also demonstrated for the liberation of Tibet at the Human Rights Conference in Vienna the same year. She was editor and contributor for the newspaper Radical News 1985-86 with articles on ecology, medicine, justice, and political current affairs. She also aired shows on both Radio Radicale and on Tele Roma 56. Lascia died in Rome on 10 September 1994, at the age of 40. Her death, of cancer, came just a few months after marrying Sergio D'Elia. Her first novel was Passage in Shadow which won the Strega Prize in 1995.
50. 1996 Alessandro Barbero b. 30 April 1959
Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle, gentiluomo
Alessandro Barbero (born April 30, 1959) is an Italian historian, novelist and essayist. Barbero was born in Turin. He attended the University of Turin, studying literature and Medieval history. Barbero is also a commentator and organiser on the Italian cultural scene, writing for the literary and cultural pages, and regularly appears on the television programme Superquark and radio programme Alle otto della sera. He is the editor of Storia d'Europa e del Mediterraneo, which is published by Salerno Editore. In 2005, the Republic of France awarded Barbero with the title of "Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres". In the late 2010s, he acquired a remarkable popularity on Internet thanks to his many conferences on YouTube, with hundreds of thousands views.
51. 1997 Claudio Magris b. 10 April 1939
Microcosmi / Microcosms
Claudio Magris is a scholar, translator, and writer. He was senator for Friuli-Venezia Giulia 1994-96. Magris graduated from the University of Turin, and has been a professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste since 1978. He is an essayist and columnist for the paper Corriere della Sera and for other European publications. His essays, novels, and theatre productions, have been translated into several languages. His magnum opus is Danubio (1986) which tracks the course of the Danube from its source to the sea; a colourful canvas of multicultural European history.
52. 1998 Enzo Siciliano 27 May 1934–9 June 2006, aged 72
I bei momenti
Enzo Siciliano was a writer, playwright, literary critic, and intellectual. He was one of Italy's most prolific literary voices and a close friend of Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini and their circle of progressive writers and film-makers who dominated Roman intellectual life from the 1960s onwards. He became a schoolteacher, but Giorgio Bassani, who had published one of his poems in the prestigious magazine, Botteghe Oscure, introduced him to the world of the Rome-based literati. After that, Siciliano gave up teaching and got an editing job at RAI. But Siciliano's illusion of bringing culture back to the ever more commercially inclined RAI was soon dashed. Initiatives such as transmitting La Scala's opening night production of Verdi's Macbeth live at prime time on the family-orientated lst Channel got low ratings, and, after 18 months, Siciliano quit, returning to his life as a writer.
53. 1999 Dacia Maraini b. 13 November 1936
Buio / Darkness: Fiction
Dacia Maraini is an Italian writer. She was born in in Fiesole, Tuscany, the daughter of Sicilian Princess Topazia Alliata di Salaparuta, an artist and art dealer, and of Fosco Maraini, a Florentine ethnologist and mountaineer of mixed Ticinese, English and Polish ancestry. At the age of 2, her family moved to Japan to escape Fascism only to be interned in a Japanese concentration camp in Nagoya from 1943-46 for refusing to recognise Mussolini's Republic of Salò, allied with the Empire of Japan. After the war, the family returned to Italy and lived in Sicily in the town of Bagheria, province of Palermo. She then moved to Rome, a city that broadened her vision of the world. Her first novel, La vacanza, was published in 1962, and the second, L’età del malessere, won the International Formentor Prize in 1963. In 1966, Maraini, Moravia and Enzo Siciliano founded the del Porcospino ("Porcupine") theatrical company. In 1973, she helped to found the Teatro della Maddalena which was run by women only. Most of her works have been inspired by her travels across the world. During her life, she has published novels, short stories, plays, several investigative studies, and collections of poetry and essays.
54. 2000 Ernesto Ferrero b. 6 May 1938
N.
Ernesto Ferrero is a Turin born Italian writer, literary critic, and translator. He has worked in publishing since 1963 and has been the director of the Turin International Book Fair 1998-2016. His works include an historical dictionary of the Italian slang, a biography in pictures of Italo Calvino, an introduction to Primo Levi, and a biography of “Bluebeard”. He is also author of the memoir The Best Years in our Life on a magic moment of the Italian Culture from early 60s to mid-70s. He has translated L.-F- Céline, Flaubert, and Perec , and writes for « La Stampa » and the main Italian newspapers. He is President of the Primo Levi International Studies Center, Turin.
2001-201055. 2001 Domenico Starnone b. 15 February 1943
Via Gemito
(Interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLkZF...)
Domenico Starnone is a writer, screenwriter and journalist. Born in Saviano, near Naples, he has worked for several newspapers and satirical magazines, usually about episodes of his life as a high school teacher. He also works as screenwriter. One of his fictional books is Via Gemito, which won the Premio Strega in 2001.
56. 2002 Margaret Mazzantini b. 27 October 1961
Non ti muovere / Don't Move
Margaret Mazzantini is an Italian-Irish writer and actress. She became a film, television and stage actor, but is best known as a writer. She began her acting career in 1980 starring in the cult horror classic Antropophagus, she has also appeared in TV and theatre. As a successful writer, her novels include Non ti muovere (Don't Move) which was adapted into a film of the same name and is directed by her husband Sergio Castellitto and stars Penélope Cruz. She has earned her several awards and nominations including Campiello Awards, a Golden Ticket Award, and a Goya Award. Mazzantini was born in Dublin, Ireland to Carlo Mazzantini, an Italian writer and artist, and Anne Donnelly, an Irish artist. She spent her childhood around Europe, Spain, and Tangier, until the family settled in Tivoli. In 1982 she graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome and in 2003, she was awarded the title of Knight Order of Merit of the Italian Republic on the initiative of the President of the Republic.
57. 2003 Melania Mazzucco b. 6 October 1966
Vita / Vita
Melania Gaia Mazzucco is an Italian author. Mazzucco graduated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1990 and the Sapienza University of Rome with a degree in History of Modern and Contemporary Literature in 1992. In the 1990s, she wrote several screenplays before publishing her first novel in 1996. Her 2003 novel Vita was awarded the Strega Prize. A film adaptation of Mazzucco's 2005 novel Un giorno perfetto was released in 2008. and was entered in the 65th Venice International Film Festival. In 2008, Mazzucco published the first of two volumes on the Renaissance painter Tintoretto which won a Bagutta Prize.
58. 2004 Ugo Riccarelli 3 December 1954–21 July 2013, aged 58
Il dolore perfetto
Ugo Riccarelli was an Italian novelist and short story writer. Born in Turin, Riccarelli read philosophy at the University of Turin. His was a life dedicated to culture and books : he won the Chianti Award in 1996 with 'The shoes hanging from the heart', his first novel, the Campiello Selection in 1998 with 'A man who was perhaps called Schulz '(Piemme) and Lo Strega in 2004 with' The perfect pain '(Mondadori). He passed away whilst hospitalised in Rome at 58. Antonio Franchini, editorial director of Mondadori fiction, remembers him thus : «I remember his strength from Ugo, a small man with a big heart. He had undergone a heart and lung transplant in England. His immense vitality and joie de vivre characterised him. I never heard him complain or feel sorry for himself - he had enormous inner strength and he was helped by writing and art. In his books he transferred a large part of his vitality ».
59. 2005 Maurizio Maggiani b. 1 October 1951
Il viaggiatore notturno
Maurizio Maggiani is an Italian writer and journalist. Born into a family of modest conditions, after having carried out dozens of professions (he was also an employee and seller of hydraulic pumps) he landed in literature . Politically he was close to the anarchists until the 2000s, although he also appreciates Mazzinianism, the ideas of Carlo Pisacane and the Garibaldinism of the Italian Risorgimento. Prizes he has won include the Inedito - L'Espresso, the Viareggio, the Campiello, the Alassio, the Stresa for fiction, the Chianti Literary Prize, the Ernest Hemingway, the Parco della Maiella Prize, and the Strega. He publishes podcasts under the title The lame traveler. In 2010 he opened his personal archive to readers on his site.
60. 2006 Sandro Veronesi b. 1 April 1959
Caos calmo / Quiet Chaos
Sandro Veronesi is an Italian novelist, essayist, and journalist. After earning a degree in architecture at the University of Florence, he opted for a writing career in his mid to late twenties. Veronesi published his first book at the age of 25, a collection of poetry (Il resto del cielo, 1984) that has remained his only venture into verse writing. He has since published five novels, three books of essays, one theatrical piece, numerous introductions to novels and collections of essays, interviews, screenplays, and television programs. Veronesi has twice been awarded the Premio Strega: in 2006 for his novel Caos calmo and in 2020 for his novel The Hummingbird.
61. 2007 Niccolò Ammaniti b. 25 September 1966
Come Dio comanda / As God Commands
Niccolò Ammaniti is an Italian writer. He was born in Rome where studied Biological Sciences at university, but did not complete his degree. His first novel, Branchie (1994) drew on his unfinished dissertation. In 1999 Branchie was adapted into a film with the same title. In 1995 Ammaniti and his father Massimo published the essay Nel nome del figlio. In 1996 he appeared with his sister in the low-budget film Growing Artichokes in Mimongo. A short novel written with Luisa Brancaccio for the anthology Gioventù Cannibale edited by Daniele Brolli came out in 1996, as did a collection of short stories, Fango. In 1999 the novel Steal You Away (Ti prendo e ti porto via), was published and in 2001 I'm Not Scared (Io non ho paura), which won the 2001 Viareggio Prize and was adapted into a film directed by Gabriele Salvatores in 2003. In 2006, he published As God Commands (Come Dio comanda), which won the Strega Prize. The novel was also adapted into a film by Gabriele Salvatores. In 2009, he published Let the Games Begin (Che la festa cominci), and in 2010 Me and You (Io e te), which was later adapted into a film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The script was nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2013 David di Donatello awards and at the 2013 Italian Golden Globe. In 2015, he published the novel Anna.
62. 2008 Paolo Giordano b. 19 December 1982
La solitudine dei numeri primi / The Solitude of Prime Numbers
Paolo Giordano is an Italian writer who won the Premio Strega literary award with his first novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers. Paolo Giordano was born in Turin, Italy. He studied physics at the University of Turin and holds a PhD in theoretical particle physics. The Solitude of Prime Numbers, his first novel, has sold over a million copies and was translated into thirty languages. The Italian language film based on the novel was released in September 2010. His book How Contagion Works is one of the first to be written on the COVID-19 pandemic and warns of the danger of authoritarianism.
63. 2009 Tiziano Scarpa b. 16 May 1963
Stabat mater
Tiziano Scarpa, born in Venice, is an Italian novelist, playwright, and poet. With his novel Stabat Mater he won the 2009 Strega Prize and the 2009 Super Mondello Prize. His books are translated into numerous languages. He collaborates with the online magazine Il primo amore (also published on paper by the Effigy editions), of which he is one of the founders, after having been one of the collective blog Nazione Indiana. He carries out intense activity as a scenic reader of his and others' works, in the theatre and beyond.
64. 2010 Antonio Pennacchi 26 January 1950-3 August 2021, aged 71
Canale Mussolini / The Mussolini Canal
Antonio Pennacchi was an Italian writer. A factory worker until the age of 50, Pennacchi was always politically active, making the momentous journey from fascism in his youth to communism in his later years. His experiences led him to write Il fascicomunista (2003), his first novel, which was the basis for the 2007 hit movie Mio fratello è figlio unico (My Brother Is an Only Child). In 2010 Pennacchi won the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, for Canale Mussolini, a novel about the fascist-era reclamation of the Pontine Marshes south of Rome, and the migration of people from the northern Veneto and Friuli regions to the newly-built cities of Latina and Sabaudia. Often referred to as the "fasciocomunista", Pennacchi was known for his trademark hat and red scarf. Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini paid posthumous tribute to him as "the first, great narrator of an Italy that until our days had been forgotten."
2011-202065. 2011 Edoardo Nesi b. 9 November 1964
Storia della mia gente / Story of My People
Edoardo Nesi is an Italian writer and politician. After completing the scientific high school, he ran the family textile company for 15 years, which he sold in 2004 due to the economic and financial crisis. He won the 2011 Strega Award with Storia della mia gente in which he tells the textile reality of Prato and the history of his family. He won the 2015 Cortina d'Ampezzo Award with L'estate infinita. In the 2013 political elections he was a candidate in the Tuscan District for the Chamber for Civic Choice , and was elected deputy. On 23 October 2013 he announced his farewell to Civic Choice, and joined the Mixed Group, while continuing to support the majority.
66. 2012 Alessandro Piperno b. 25 March 1972
Inseparabili
Alessandro Piperno is a writer and literary critic of Jewish descent. He graduated in French Literature at the University of Rome, where he currently teaches and researches. In 2000, he published the controversial critical essay on Marcel Proust, inflammatorily entitled "Proust antiebreo (Proust, Anti-Jew)". In 2005, he achieved notoriety with his first novel Con le peggiori intenzioni (translated as The Worst Intentions). Following general critical acclaim, and positive reviews on the Corriere della Sera (defining him the "new Proust"), his book became a bestseller in Italy (with 200,000 copies sold in a few months). For this book he won the Premio Campiello for best first novel. His writing is described both as ironic and ironically self-referential, with a disenchanted view of society and life in general. In 2012, Piperno won the Premio Strega for his novel Inseparabili. Piperno studied guitar and has a strong interest in music. Until 2005, when he reached success as a writer, he was part of the Roman rock-blues Random as the solo guitarist and singer.
67. 2013 Walter Siti b. 20 May 1947
Resistere non serve a niente
A former university professor and literary critic, Walter Siti is a writer and the recipient of many literary awards. Born in Modena in 1947, Siti graduated from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He taught at the Universities of Pisa, Calabria and L’Aquila, publishing numerous critical studies on 20th century Italian poetry. His short stories have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies. His essays and novels have been translated into English, French and Spanish. Siti was an editor for Granta Italia, and a television reviewer for the Turin newspaper La Stampa. He has collaborated on screenplays for cinema and theatre, and written for television. He writes book reviews for the daily newspapers La Stampa and Repubblica. He has also taught creative writing at the Belleville School in Milan. He is the recipient of various literary awards, including the Premio Strega and the Premio Mondello.
68. 2014 Francesco Piccolo b. 12 March 1964
Il desiderio di essere come tutti
Francesco Piccolo is an Italian author of novels, short stories and screen plays. He was born at Caserta. He won 2 literary prizes: the Premio Giuseppe Berto and the Premio letterario Piero Chiara. In the cinema he has worked on screenplays for My Name Is Tanino, Paz! (based on cartoons by Andrea Pazienza), Ovunque sei, Il caimano (for which he, Nanni Moretti and Federica Pontremoli were awarded the 2006 David di Donatello for Best Script), Nemmeno in un sogno, Caos calmo (in which he also made an appearance) and Giorni e nuvole. He has also written for newspapers and periodicals, including la Repubblica and Diario. Piccolo lives in Rome, where he runs the screenwriters laboratory for the DAMS course at Roma Tre.
69. 2015 Nicola Lagioia b. 18 April 1973
La ferocia / Ferocity
Nicola Lagioia is an Italian writer. Born in Bari, Lagioia debuted as a novelist in 2001 with Tre sistemi per sbarazzarsi di Tolstoj (senza risparmiare se stessi). With his novel Riportando tutto a casa he won several awards, including the 2010 Viareggio Prize. In 2013 and in 2014 he was among the film selectors of the Venice International Film Festival. In 2015 he won the Strega Prize with the novel La ferocia (a.k.a. "The ferocity").
70. 2016 Edoardo Albinati b. 11 October 1956
La scuola cattolica / The Catholic School
Edoardo Albinati is an Italian novelist. Born in Rome, after Albinati started his career as a translator, a script adaptor and as editor of the magazine Nuovi Argomenti. He made his debut as a writer in 1988, with a collection of short stories titled Arabeschi della vita morale. His 1989 novel Il polacco lavatore di vetri was adapted into a film, The Ballad of the Windshield Washers by Peter Del Monte. From the mid-1990s he works at the Rebibbia prison as a teacher. In 2002 and in 2004 he took part to two UN High Commission for Refugees missions in Afghanistan and Chad, also writing several reports published by the newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica. In 2004 Albinati won the Viareggio Prize with the novel Svenimenti. In 2006 he co-wrote with actor Filippo Timi the novel Tuttalpiù muoio, which later Timi adapted into a stage drama. In 2015 he collaborated with Matteo Garrone for the screenplay of the fantasy film Tale of Tales. In 2016 he won the Strega Prize with the semi-autobiographical novel La scuola cattolica.
71. 2017 Paolo Cognetti b. 27 January 1978
Le otto montagne / The Eight Mountains
Paolo Cognetti is a writer. Born in Milan, he started studying mathematics at university, but quit to enroll in Milan's film-making school Civica Scuola di Cinema «Luchino Visconti», where he graduated in 1999. He taught himself American literature and started directing documentaries in 2004, especially on social, political, and literary topics. His first work as a writer was the short story Fare ordine, which won the Premio Subway−Letteratura. He loves New York City, which has become the main subject of some of his documentaries. His other passion is the mountain, where he likes to spend a few months alone every year. In 2016, he published his first novel Le otto montagne (The Eight Mountains), which granted him the Premio Strega, as well as various international awards, such as the Prix Médicis étranger, the Prix François Sommer, and the English Pen Translates Award.
72. 2018 Helena Janeczek b. 19 April 1964
La ragazza con la Leica / The Girl with the Leica
Helena Janeczek is an Italian novelist. She was born in Munich, Germany, from a Polish family of Jews who survived the Holocaust and moved to Italy when she was 19 and has lived there ever since. Her first book, Lezioni di tenebra (Lessons of Darkness), was published in 1997. It was a retelling of her family history and followed her journey with her mother to Auschwitz, where her mother was detained during WW2. Her 2010 novel, Le rondini di Montecassino (Montecassino's Swallows), won the Zerilli-Marimò Prize for Italian Fiction. It follows a group of soldiers fighting in the Battle of Monte Cassino during WW2. In 2018, she won the Strega Prize for her novel La ragazza con la Leica (The Girl with the Leica). It is about photographer Gerda Taro who died during the Spanish Civil War. It was the first time in 15 years a woman had won the prize since Melania Mazzucco in 2003.
73. 2019 Antonio Scurati b. 25 June 1969
M. Il figlio del secolo / M: Son of the Century
Antonio Scurati is an Italian writer and academic. He was born in Naples and graduated with a degree in philosophy from the University of Milan. He continued his studies in Paris. Scurati later completed a PhD in Theory and Text Analysis at the University of Bergamo. He worked as a professore a contratto at Bergamo, coordinating a centre for studying war and violence. At Bergamo, he also taught the theory and elements of TV language. In 2005, he became a researcher in Cinema, Photography, and Television. In 2008, he moved to the IULM University of Milan, where he is currently an associate professor and conducts a creative writing seminar and a seminar in orality and rhetoric.
74. 2020 Sandro Veronesi
Il colibrì / The Hummingbird
See post 60
2021-75. 2021 Emanuele Trevi b. 7 January 1964
Due vite
Emanuele Trevi is an Italian writer and critic. He was born in Rome, the son of Mario Trevi, a Jungian psychoanalyst. Trevi has written numerous critical essays on literary figures. His work on the Italian poet Pietro Tripodo won the Sandro Onofri Prize. He also edited an anthology with the writer Marco Lodoli. His book Qualcosa di scritto (Something Written) won the EU Prize for Literature in 2012. In 2021, his book Due vite won the prestigious Strega Prize. Trevi has also worked in publishing and radio. He is a frequent contributor to national newspapers and magazines.
I've read No. 62, 35, 33, 17, 13 and 10.
thanks Kathy, and Rosemarie I was thinking how I've read more of these than the French ones :)
I got an Umberto Eco book I haven't read yet yesterday - The Prague CemeteryStill working away at this.
I might do the the Akutagawa and the Naoki (Japanese book prizes) next.
Jazzy, that book is very entertaining. I loved it!
Now i just need to fit it into a monthly read - I'm still working my way through The Shining.
I'm done! I hope you like these.*faints*
Yes, please, Rosemarie! I got a few of the newer ones in English as epubs. 72. The Girl with the Leica looks pretty good.
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Girl with the Leica (other topics)M. Il figlio del secolo (other topics)
Il colibrì (other topics)
La ragazza con la Leica (other topics)
M: Son of the Century (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Antonio Scurati (other topics)Helena Janeczek (other topics)
Sandro Veronesi (other topics)
Alessandro Piperno (other topics)
Nicola Lagioia (other topics)
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The Strega Prize is Italy's most prestigious literary prize, established in 1947 by the owner of Strega liqueur. Rather like the Academy Awards, the Strega Prize is administered by a 400-person committee of prominent cultural and artistic figures. In 1944 Maria and Goffredo Bellonci started to host a literary salon at their home in Rome. These Sunday gatherings of writers, artists and intellectuals grew to include many of the most notable figures of Italian cultural life. The group became known as the Amici della Domenica, or ‘Sunday Friends’. In 1947 the Belloncis, together with Guido Alberti, owner of the firm which produces the Strega liqueur, decided to inaugurate a prize for fiction, the winner being chosen by the Sunday friends. The activities of the Bellonci circle and the institution of the prize were seen as marking a tentative return to ‘normality’ in Italian cultural life: a feature of the reconstruction which followed the years of Fascism, war, occupation and liberation. The first winner of the Strega, elected by the Sunday Friends, was Ennio Flaiano, for his first and only novel Tempo di uccidere, which is set in Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. It has been translated into English as The Short Cut. Maria Bellonci published a history of the Strega prize, titled Come un racconto gli anni del premio Strega, in 1971.
Since the death of Maria Bellonci in 1986, the prize has been administered by the Fondazione Maria e Goffredo Bellonci. The members of the now 400-strong prize jury, drawn from Italy’s cultural elite, are still known as the Sunday Friends. For a book to be considered it must have the support of at least two Friends. This initial long list is whittled down at a first ballot to a short list of five. The second round of voting, followed by the proclamation of the victor, takes place on the first Thursday in July in the nymphaeum of the Villa Giulia, Rome.
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1951-1960
1961-1970
1971-1980
1981-1990
1991-2000
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2011-2020
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