Acclaimed Italian Authors Trivia Quiz

Answer: Carlo Levi

Carlo Levi (1902-1975) was a painter, writer, anti-fascist, political journalist, and doctor, thirsty for knowledge and guided by a deep humanitarian sense. He studied medicine but his passion was painting and writing. He is the author of several books and essays, the best known internationally being his book "Christ Stopped at Eboli" (Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, 1945)

In the book, he reports his time of exile, from 1935 to 1936, to Grassano and Aliano, in the region of Lucania (today known as Basilicata), after being arrested for his political activism. The title of the book comes from an expression used by the people of the region who said of themselves "Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli". The roads did not reach the villages and the residents felt excluded from Christianity, from history, from human experience itself. It is a very interesting book and in 1979 it was the basis of the film of the same name, directed by Francesco Rosi, starring Gian Maria Volonté and Irene Papas.

Answer: Alessandro Baricco

The Italian writer, director, and performer Alessandro Baricco (1958) received degrees in philosophy and piano. He worked as a music critic for the newspapers La Repubblica and La Stampa and hosted talk shows on TV. He published about 15 novels, the first of which was named "Lands of Glass" (1991), several collections of short writings, screenplays for cinema, plays for the theater, and has often acted as a director and even as an actor. He also founded a school with numerous courses on narrative techniques.

His most famous work is the theatrical monologue "Novecento" which was adapted for the cinema with great success. The film, called "The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean" (1998), was directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, his first English-language film. The plot concerns a baby boy who was abandoned on a ship and was adopted by a coal man from the boiler room who gave the baby his own name plus 1900, the year he was found. The baby became an excellent pianist and spent his life on the ship.

Answer: Dino Buzzati

Dino Buzzati-Traverso, best known as Dino Buzzati (1906 - 1972) was a poet, novelist, short story writer, and a symbolist and surrealist painter. He graduated in law and at the age of 22 was hired by the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he worked all his life. He also wrote film scripts and opera libretti. During the Second World War, he served in Africa as a journalist for the Royal Italian Navy.

His most famous novel is "The Tartar Steppe" published in 1940, which tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo, who spent his entire life in the Bastiani Fortress, an old border fortress, waiting for the invasion of the barbarians, who lived beyond the desert. This novel gave the author worldwide fame and had a great influence on several authors and people who read it.

Answer: Antonio Tabucchi

Antonio Tabucchi (1943 - 2012) was an Italian writer, and professor of literature and Portuguese language at the University of Siena. He was passionate about Portugal. He wrote essays about the poet Fernando Pessoa and he and his wife translated several works of Fernando Pessoa into Italian.

His enigmatic novel "Indian Nocturne" (1984) tells the story of a man who travels to India in search of a mysterious friend named Xavier, who leaves clues but is never found. The narrative confuses the reader, who sometimes gets the impression that the narrator is searching for himself. The novel was made into film, under the same name, in 1989, directed by French director Alain Corneau.

Answer: Marco Balzano

Marco Balzano was born in 1978 in Milan. He is a writer and a literature teacher at a high school. Balzano has published essays, poetry collections, and several novels, many of which have won awards.

His bestselling novel "I'm Staying Here" (Resto Qui), which has been translated into several languages, has received numerous awards. In the novel, a mother tells the story of her life in the small village of Curon in South Tyrol, which was caught between Italian Fascism and German Nazism. The novel intertwines history and the lives of people living in the region.

Answer: Primo Levi

Primo Michele Levi (1919 - 1987) was a Jewish-Italian chemist, writer, partisan, and Holocaust survivor. He was raised in a Jewish community and studied chemistry at the University of Turin, graduating in 1941. In 1943 he joined the resistance movement in northern Italy and was captured and sent to Auschwitz, where he worked in a synthetic rubber factory. In 1945 he was liberated by the Soviets. From 1961 onwards he worked in a chemical production plant. His first book, "If This is a Man," analyzes the atrocities he witnessed during his imprisonment and elaborates on the qualities of humanity. He published several books in the form of poetry, novels, and short stories.

His most popular and critically acclaimed book is "The Periodic Table", a collection of 21 short stories, each named after elements of the Periodic Table. He draws analogies between the physical, chemical, and moral spheres. It has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Primo Levi said he never thought he would be a writer, that he was a chemist by conviction.

Answer: Tiziano Terzani

Tiziano Terzani (1938 - 2004) was an Italian journalist, writer, and war correspondent best known for his in-depth knowledge of East Asia in the 20th century. In 1965, he went to Japan for the first time on a business trip. After this first contact with Asia, Terzani's life changed radically. Terzani left his job and moved to the USA to study public affairs and Chinese language and customs. He worked in Asia as a correspondent for the German "Der Spiegel" for over 30 years, covering many events including the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and the movements that took place in China.

He wrote numerous books in which he combined his experiences as a journalist, with travel writing and his own reflections, always focusing on the intersections between the West and the East. His work offers a vision of the political and cultural transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

In 1976, Terzani, while in Hong Kong, was warned by a fortune-teller not to travel by air during the year 1993, otherwise he would risk his life. After 16 years, he decided it would be better not to take the risk and believe the prophecy. He spent the year traveling by train, car, and ship between Asia and Europe. According to Terzani, it was a splendid experience, shared in the book "A Fortune-Teller Told Me" published in 1995.

Answer: Susanna Tamaro

Susanna Tamaro (b. 1957) is an Italian writer and film director. After her parents separated, she was taken care of by her grandmother and later by a care home. She described herself as a "strange child" and was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. She studied at an Italian film school and obtained her diploma in directing in 1997. She has worked as a film and television director and has published numerous novels, stories, magazine articles, and children's literature.

Her novel "Follow Your Heart" (1993), although not well received immediately after its publication, ended up being a worldwide success. The novel begins in 1992, when an Italian lady, knowing of her imminent death, decides to write a letter to her granddaughter who lives in America. In the letter, she exposes her life, joys, sorrows, and regrets, and what life has taught her: that regardless of what is at stake, we must look within ourselves and follow our hearts. In 1996, based on the book, the film of the same name was released, directed by Italian director Cristina Comencini and starring Virna Lisi.

Answer: Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco (1932 - 2016) was an Italian literary critic, novelist, semiotician, and political and social commentator. He wrote extensively during his life. He published seven novels, numerous non-fiction books, and children's books.

He achieved worldwide fame with the novel "The Name of the Rose", a detective novel set in an Italian abbey where several suspicious deaths are investigated. The book was turned into a historical mystery film of the same name, released in 1986, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Sean Connery.

Answer: Italo Calvino

The Italian Italo Calvino (1923 - 1985) was born in Cuba to an Italian family that had moved to America. His parents had a background in agriculture and went to Mexico and later to Cuba to work in agricultural research. In 1925, the family returned to Italy and continued to work in agriculture. Calvino, to follow the family tradition, also studied in this area until he decided to change Agriculture for the Arts. During WWII, he participated in the Italian Resistance, and this experience inspired his first neo-realistic novel "The Path to the Nest of Spiders" (1947). During his life as a writer, he went through several phases and continued writing until his death.

In the 1950s, his work turned to fantasy and allegory, and he became internationally known. "The Cloven Viscount" is a fantasy novel, which is collected with the "Baron in the Trees" and "The Nonexistent Knight". The story is about a viscount who, while participating in a war, is split in two by a cannonball, and as a result, he is transformed into two people and two different personalities, which end up creating problems and not pleasing anyone.

Answer: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma (1896 - 1957), known as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, was the Prince of Lampedusa, a nobleman and writer. Lampedusa's formal education was rather erratic, but he was a great reader of various subjects and was proficient in several languages, such as Latin, Greek, English, German. From 1917 he was called up for the army and was taken prisoner by the Austro-Hungarian forces. After leaving captivity and the army he spent some time traveling. In 1955 he began writing "Il Gattopardo" (The Leopard), which was revised and expanded over time, while he wrote other works. The novel was rejected several times by publishers and was only published in 1958 after the author's death.

"The Leopard" tells the story of the decadent Sicilian aristocracy, especially the Salina family, which is threatened by the revolution and the emerging democratic forces. In 1860, the Prince of Salina, Don Fabrizio, the patriarch who ruled the region, had to face the arrival of revolutionary Antonio Garibaldi in Sicily and decide whether to resist the changes or accept them. The novel was the basis for the film of the same name, released in 1963, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale.

Answer: Grazia Deledda

Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda, known as Grazia Deledda, (1871 - 1936) was an Italian writer who at age 13 published her first story in a local newspaper. In the 1890s she published her first collection of short stories "Into the Blue", and her first novel "Flowers of Sardinia". Grazia wrote throughout her life. Her last novel, "The Church of Solitude", is semi-autobiographical, and concerns an Italian woman having to deal with a fatal illness (she died of breast cancer). Grazia completed 33 novels and more than 200 articles and short stories. She used to write in Italian and most of her work is set in Sardinia, mostly about the traditions of Sardinian culture. In the first decades of the 20th century, Grazia was an important Italian writer and the most important writer from the Island of Sardinia. Grazia Deledda was awarded the 1926 Nobel Prize for Literature, the second woman and the first Italian woman to receive this award.

Her most popular book, "Reeds in the Wind" (Canne al Vento), was published in 1913. The title alludes to the fragility of the human being (reed) in the face of destiny (wind). The protagonist is Efix, a servant, who has dedicated his life to the Pintor family, especially the three unmarried sisters - Ester, Noemi, and Ruth and who has to face the agitation caused by the appearance of a nephew who comes to live with his aunts.

Answer: Italo Svevo

Aaron Hector Schmitz (1861 - 1928) was born to an Italian mother and a Jewish German father. He grew up reading Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, and the classics of French and German literature. In addition to speaking Italian and its regional dialects, he later attended boarding school in the German Empire, when became fluent in German. He became a businessman, a writer, a novelist and lived in England for a while.

In 1880, he began his career as a writer under the pseudonym Italo Svevo. This name literally means "Italus the Swabian", which demonstrates his dual cultural identity: Italian and German. He published his first novel "Una Vita" (1892) which was not a successful one. His third novel "Zeno's Conscience" or "Confessions of Zeno" ("La Conscienza di Zeno") is his best-known work, published in 1923 and also not successful in Italy. The writer James Joyce, who had been Svevo's friend since 1907, encouraged him to continue writing and sent the book to two French critics who published it and made it a success in France, which ended up catching the attention of Italian publishers.

The novel is presented as a diary written by Zeno and focuses on his feelings and thoughts as he seeks a cure. The diary was published by Zeno's doctor as revenge for him interrupting his treatment. While working on a sequel to "Zeno", Svevo was killed in a car accident. After his death, several of his works were published.

Answer: Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Calogero Camilleri (1925 - 2019) known as Andrea Camilleri, was a writer, screenwriter, and director of theater and television. He studied literature at the University of Palermo but did not complete his degree. From 1948 to 1950 he attended the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico to study stage and film direction. In his career as a screenwriter and director, Camilleri focused on plays by Pirandello and Beckett. He also worked on the production of several plays for RAI and gave classes in Film Direction at the same academy where he studied.

Camilleri published two books in the late 1970s that did not attract the public's attention. Only after 20 years did he publish a new book that became a success: "The Hunting Season" (1992). In 1994, the author published "The Shape of Water" ("La forma dell'Acqua"), the first book in a series of 28 books starring Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The inspector is an astute fictional chief of police and an excellent detective in Vigàta, an imaginary town in Sicily. The Salvo Montalbano novels made Camilleri internationally known.

Answer: Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg née Levi (1916 - 1991) was born and raised in a family of Jewish origin and well-connected with activists, intellectuals, and businessmen. At the age of 17, Natalia published her first story "I Bambini" in a magazine. In 1938, she married Leone Ginzburg, an Italian editor, writer, journalist, and anti-fascist activist, who died in prison in 1944 due to torture. In 1942, Natalia published "The Road to the City" under the name Alessandra Tornimparte, since during Italy's Fascist period Jews were forbidden to publish. In the 1940s, she worked for the Giulio Einaudi publishing house in Turin, one of the most important Italian publishing houses of the 20th century. In 1950, Natalia married Gabriele Baldini, a professor of English literature, and moved to Rome. Over the next 20 years, her writing career took off. She wrote more than 10 novels, countless essays, and dramatic works.

Her book "Family Lexicon" (1963) is considered her masterpiece. It was written when Natalia was living in London and missing her family and country. In this book, the author blends her family memories with fiction. Her childhood home was busy because, in addition to the family of the couple and five children, there were many visitors, friends, and famous people. The book recalls routines, jokes, fights, and sayings, showing the power of families over all of us. Ginzburg states: "The places, people, and events in this book are real...". She can be seen in Pier Paolo Pasolini's movie "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" (1964) as Mary of Bethany.