Bernardo Bertolucci was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved international acclaim. With The Last Emperor (1987) he became the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director, and he received many other accolades including a BAFTA Award, a César Award, two Golden Globes, a Golden Lion in 2007, and an Honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2011.
The Leopard is a novel by Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the leading Italian publishing houses Mondadori and Einaudi, it became the top-selling novel in Italian history and is considered one of the most important novels in modern Italian literature. In 1959, it won Italy's highest award for fiction, the Strega Prize. In 2012, The Guardian named it as one of "the 10 best historical novels". The novel was made into an award-winning 1963 film of the same name, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.
Jonathan Saul Freedland is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and used to write for the Jewish Chronicle until, along with Hadley Freeman, David Aaronovitch, David Baddiel and others, he resigned dramatically in September 2024. Freedman also presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series The Long View. Freedland also writes thrillers, mainly under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, and has written a play, Jews. In Their Own Words, performed in 2022 at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
Helen Oyeyemi FRSL is a British novelist and writer of short stories.
Thomas Anthony Hollander is a British actor. Hollander trained with National Youth Theatre and won the Ian Charleson Award in 1992 for his performance as Witwoud in The Way of the World. He made his Broadway debut in the David Hare play The Judas Kiss in 1998. His performance as Henry Carr in a revival of the Tom Stoppard play Travesties earned nominations for both the Olivier Award and Tony Award.
Padre Padrone is a 1977 Italian film directed by Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani. The Tavianis used both professional and non-professional actors from the Sardinian countryside. The title literally means "Father Master"; it has been translated as My Father, My Master or Father and Master.
The Strega Prize is the most important Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction written in the Italian language by an author of any nationality and first published between 1 March of the previous year and 28/29 February.
John Boyne is an Irish novelist. He is the author of sixteen novels for adults, six novels for younger readers, two novellas and one collection of short stories. His novels are published in over 50 languages. His 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was adapted into a 2008 film of the same name.
Rachel Cusk FRSL is a British novelist and writer.
Paolo Sorrentino is an Italian film director, screenwriter, and writer. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of Italian cinema working today. He is known for visually striking and complex dramas and has often been compared to Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, two Cannes Film Festival prizes, four Venice Film Festival Awards and four European Film Awards. In Italy he was honoured with eight David di Donatello and six Nastro d'Argento awards.
Domenico Starnone is an Italian writer, screenwriter, and journalist.
Paolo Maurensig was an Italian novelist, best known for his book Canone inverso (1996), a complex tale of a violin and its owners.
Susanna Tamaro is an Italian novelist and film director. She is an author of novels, stories, magazine articles, and children's literature. Her novel Va' dove ti porta il cuore was a worldwide bestseller, translated into 44 languages and awarded with the 1994 Premio Donna Città di Roma.
The Banff Mountain Book Festival is an annual book festival held at the Banff Centre in Banff, Canada.
Georgi Gospodinov Georgiev is a Bulgarian writer, poet and playwright. His novel Time Shelter received the 2023 International Booker Prize, shared with translator Angela Rodel, as well as the Strega European Prize. His novel The Physics of Sorrow received the Jan Michalski Prize and the Angelus Award. His works have been translated into 25 languages.
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works. Time magazine called Ferrante one of the 100 most influential people in 2016.
The Neapolitan Novels, also known as the Neapolitan Quartet, are a four-part series of fiction by the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, published originally by Edizioni e/o, translated into English by Ann Goldstein and published by Europa Editions. The English-language titles of the novels are My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015). In the original Italian edition, the whole series bears the title of the first novel L'amica geniale. The series has been characterized as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. In an interview in Harper's Magazine, Elena Ferrante has stated that she considers the four books to be "a single novel" published serially for reasons of length and duration. The series has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries.
Paolo Cognetti is an Italian writer. He started studying mathematics at university, but quit to enroll at 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 about 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 mountains, where he likes to spend a few months alone every year. In 2016, he published his first novel Le otto montagne, which granted him the Premio Strega 2017, Italy′s most prestigious literary award, as well as various international awards, such as the Prix Médicis étranger, the Prix François Sommer, and the English Pen Translates Award.
Helena Janeczek is an Italian novelist of Polish Jewish origin.
M: Son of the Century is a 2018 historical novel by Antonio Scurati. It is the first novel in a tetralogy recounting the rise of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. It was a bestseller and was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize.
