Novelist and poet, born in Bologna, N Italy. He contributed to various magazines, and in his work recreated Ferrara's Jewish society during the Fascist years and the horror of the persecutions. His first major success was Cinque storie ferraresi (1956, Five Stories of Ferrara), most of them composed in the aftermath of World War 2. A sensitive chronicler of Italian Jews and their suffering under Fascism, other major works include Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1962, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, filmed in 1971) and L'airone (1968, The Heron, Campiello Prize). The main themes of his work are the magic of childhood and the loneliness of the individual. His essays include Le parole preparate e altri scritti di letteratura (1966).
Giorgio Bassani (March 4, 1916 - April 13, 2000) was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual.
Biography
Born in Bologna of Jewish heritage, he studied at the University of Bologna with the art historian Roberto Longhi, and privately with the historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce.
He was an editor for the publishing house Feltrinelli (and apparently was the first to recognize the merit of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo), and he served as president of "Italia Nostra." Bassani had previously published novels and collections of poetry, but his career took off in 1956 with a volume of short stories, Cinque storie ferraresi.
He then realized that Ferrara was his real subject matter, with its Christian and Jewish elements and its perspectives and its landscapes, and he produced the series of novels that comprise Il romanzo di Ferrara which includes Dentra le mura;
These realistically document the Italian Jewish community under Fascism in a style that manifests the difficulties of searching for truth in the meanderings of memory and moral conscience.
User Comments Add a comment…