Giorgio Bassani

Bassani, Giorgio 

Born Mar. 4, 1916, in Bologna. Italian writer.

Until 1943, Bassani studied and lived in Ferrara, which is connected with all his creative work. He fought in the ranks of the resistance. Bassani’s literary activity began in 1940 with the novella City on the Plain, written under the pseudonym of Giacomo Marchi. Bassani gained fame with his collection of neorealistic, antifascist stories entitled Five Stories of Ferrara (1956, awarded the Strega Literary Prize). The autobiographical and psychological novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962, awarded the Viareggio Literary Prize) is permeated with an antiracist spirit. In his novella Behind the Door (1964), the author returns to the years of his youth in Ferrara. Bassani has published a collection of articles entitled The Prepared Words and Other Articles About Literature (1966). He also writes film scenarios.

WORKS

Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Toti. Pisa, 1955.
Gli occhiali d’oro, 2nd ed. Turin, 1962.
L’airon. Milan, 1968.
In Russian translation:
“Memorial’naia doska.” In the collection Dolgii put’ vozvrashcheniia. Moscow, 1965.
“Noch’ 1943 goda.” In the collection Ital’ianskaia novella 20 v. Moscow, 1969.

REFERENCE

Marabini, C. “Bassani.” Nuova antologia, 1969, no. 2017.

G. D. BOGEMSKII