Lilith, also spelled Lilit, Lilitu, or Lilis, is a feminine figure in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology, theorized to be the first wife of Adam and a primordial she-demon. Lilith is cited as having been "banished" from the Garden of Eden for not complying with and obeying Adam.
Primo Michele Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works include If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland; and The Periodic Table (1975), a collection of mostly autobiographical short stories each named after a chemical element as it played a role in each story, which the Royal Institution named the best science book ever written.
Carlo Emilio Gadda was an Italian writer and poet. He belongs to the tradition of the language innovators, writers who played with the somewhat stiff standard pre-war Italian language, and added elements of dialects, technical jargon and wordplay.
Cesare Pavese was an Italian novelist, poet, short story writer, translator, literary critic, and essayist. He is often referred to as one of the most influential Italian writers of his time.
Natalia Ginzburg was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She wrote novels, short stories and essays, for which she received the Strega Prize and Bagutta Prize. Most of her works were also translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and the United States.
If Not Now, When? is a novel by the Italian author Primo Levi, first published in 1982 under the title Se non ora, quando?
If This Is a Man is a memoir by Jewish Italian writer Primo Levi, first published in 1947. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp (Monowitz) from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.
Francesco Rosi was an Italian filmmaker, screenwriter and theatre director. His film The Mattei Affair won the Palme d'Or at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. Rosi's films, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s, often appeared to have political messages. While the topics of his later films became less politically oriented and more angled toward literature, he continued to direct until 1997, his last film being the adaptation of Primo Levi's book, The Truce.
The Periodic Table is a 1975 short story collection by Primo Levi, named after the periodic table in chemistry. In 2006, the Royal Institution of Great Britain named it the best science book ever.
The Sixth Day and Other Tales, written by Primo Levi, is a collection of short stories, originally published in Storie naturali and Vizio di forma. Unlike the author's earlier and better-known works, these stories may be considered science fiction.
Assunta "Pupetta" Maresca was an Italian criminal who was a well-known figure in the Camorra. She made international newspaper headlines in the mid-1950s when she killed the murderer of her husband in revenge.
Luciano Bianciardi was an Italian journalist, translator and writer of short stories and novels.
Vincenzo Pasquale Angelo Petrocelli was a Neapolitan artist. Petrocelli was born in Cervaro in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He studied under Domenico Morelli, and was active as a painter from about 1850. He was principally a history painter, but also painted portraits and genre scenes. His sons Achille and Arturo were both painters.
Goliarda Sapienza was an Italian actress and writer. She is best known for her 1998 novel L'arte della gioia.
Anne Milano Appel is an American translator of Italian literature and language teacher. She obtained a doctorate in Romance languages from Rutgers University in 1970. She has translated, among others, works by Claudio Magris, Paolo Giordano, Giovanni Arpino and Goliarda Sapienza. She was awarded the John Florio Prize in 2012 for her translation of Arpino's Scent of a Woman. She is also working on English translations of Giordano's Like Family, Syrian Dust by Francesca Borri and Don't Tell Me You're Afraid by Giuseppe Catozzella.
Ann Goldstein is an American editor and translator from the Italian language. She is best known for her translations of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet. She was the panel chair for translated fiction at the US National Book Award in 2022. She was awarded the PEN Renato Poggioli prize in 1994 and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2008.
Amara Lakhous is an Italian author, journalist and anthropologist of Algerian origin. He currently lives in New York City.
Vittorio (Vito) Lattanzio was an Italian Christian Democrat politician and physician.
Ernesto Capocci Belmonte was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and politician.
K.L. Reich is a semi-autobiographical novel written by the Catalan author Joaquim Amat-Piniella. It is based on his experiences as a Spanish Republican prisoner in the Mauthausen concentration camp during the Second World War. The first version was written in Andorra between 1945 and 1946, following Amat-Piniella's liberation from the camp. However, its publication was delayed for 17 years by state censorship in Franco's Spain. It was finally published in 1963, first in Spanish translation and then in the original Catalan.
