Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
istocratic Jewish family attempts to disregard the rising tide of anti-Semitism. In Margaret
Mazzantini's
Venuto al mondo
(Twice Born; 2008) it's the Bosnian War that forms the
backdrop to a powerful tale of motherhood and loss.
Social Realism
Italy has always been its own sharpest critic and several 20th-century Italian authors cap-
tured their own troubling circumstances with unflinching accuracy. Grazia Deledda's
Cosima
(1937) is her fictionalised memoir of coming of age and into her own as a writer
in rural Sardinia. Deledda became one of the first women to win the Nobel Prize for Liter-
ature (1926) and set the tone for such bittersweet recollections of rural life as Carlo Levi's
Cristo si รจ fermato a Eboli
(Christ Stopped at Eboli; 1945).
Italy's most coveted literary prize, the Premio Strega, is awarded annually to a work of Italian
prose fiction. Its youngest recipient to date is physicist-cum-writer Paolo Giordano, who, at 26,
won for his debut novel
La solitudine dei numeri primi
(The Solitude of Prime Numbers; 2008).
Jealousy, divorce and parental failings are grappled head-on by pseudonymous author
Elena Ferrante in her brutally honest
I giorni dell'abbandono
(The Days of Abandonment;
2002). Confronting themes also underline Alessandro Pipero's
Persecuzione
(Persecution;
2010), which sees an esteemed oncologist accused of child molestation. Its sequel,
In-
separabili
(2012), won the 2012 Premio Strega literature prize.
