{related_entries id="evnt_auth_1"} {/related_entries} talks to {related_entries id="evnt_chair"} {/related_entries}

One of Italy’s most celebrated novelists and playwrights Dacia Maraini talks about her life in writing.

Maraini has written more than 60 novels and plays and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012. Her best known work is The Silent Duchess, winner of Italy’s premier literary prize, the Premio Campiello, and a worldwide bestseller. Her novels, which also include Woman at War, Isolina, Voices and Train to Budapest, have been published in more than 20 countries.

Maraini was born into an aristocratic Sicilian family. Her family refused to sign up to Mussolini’s republic and moved to Japan when she was a young girl. She spent three years in a Japanese concentration camp. She is a feminist and political activist and her work is often concerned with these issues. Above all, she is known as a great storyteller. Maraini was the partner of the great Italian novelist Alberto Moravia for almost 20 years and together they founded the Porcupine Theatre Company.

Here she talks to Professor Martin McLaughlin, Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian Studies and fellow of Magdalen College.

Presented by the Italian Cultural Institute.

Programme of Italian literature and culture.