Fausta Cialente
Fausta Terni Cialente (29 November 1898 – 11 March 1994) was an Italian novelist, journalist and political activist.[1] She is a recipient of the Strega Prize.
Early life
Cialente was born on 29 November 1898 in Cagliari, Sardinia. She was the second child of Alfredo Cialente, an army officer originally from the Abruzzo region in central Italy and Elsa Wieselberger who had trained as a soprano and came from a musical family in Trieste.[2] Her elder brother Renato (1897–1943) became an actor and appeared in many films. Fausta's early life was marked by upheaval as the family followed the movements of her father. In 1921 she married Enrico Terni (1876–1960), a banker from a Jewish family of Italian origin who had settled in Alexandria, Egypt in the early nineteenth century. Enrico was a musician and a composer. Cialente's only daughter, Lionella (called Lili), was born in 1923. Although based in Alexandria the family would spend long holidays in Italy.[2]
Writings and later life
Cialente's first novel Natalia, completed in 1927, treated the lesbian relationship of an unhappily married woman. It was published in Rome in 1930 and won the Dieci Savi Prize. When the initial print run of 3000 copies had been sold, her publisher wanted to print more copies but the censors in the Fascist regime asked for two sections of the book to be revised. Cialente refused and the book was not reprinted but in 1932 a French translation was published in France. In 1930 her short story "Marianna" was published in the literary magazine L'Italia Letteraria which was edited by Giambattista Angioletti. Her first novel with an Egyptian setting, Cortile a Cleopatra, was completed in 1931. She tried unsuccessfully to persuade the prestigious publisher Mondadori to accept the work. It was serialized in L'Italia letteraria in 1935 and published as a book in 1936.[2]
From 1940 she wrote antifascist pamphlets and made daily broadcasts from Radio Cairo against the Fascist regime in Italy. In 1947 she returned to Italy, living there until moving to England in 1984.[3]
Many of Cialente's subsequent stories were set in Egypt. "The position of her female characters preoccupies Cialente throughout her work, not least in the semi-autobiographical Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger",[1] which won the Strega Prize.[3]
She died in Pangbourne on 11 March 1994.[2]
Works
- Cialente, Fausta (1930). Natalia: romanzo (in Italian). Rome: Sapientia, Edizioni dei Dieci. OCLC 955167272.
- Cialente, Fausta (1930). "Marianna". L'Italia Letteraria. 6. Republished in Interno con figure (1976).
- Cialente, Fausta (1936). Cortile a Cleopatra (in Italian). Milan: A. Corticelli. OCLC 13873407.
- Cialente, Fausta (1961). Ballata levantina. Biblioteca di letteratura. I contemporanei, 25 (in Italian). Milan: Feltrinelli. OCLC 977921413. Translated by Isabel Quigly as The Levantines, 1963
- Cialente, Fausta (1966). Un inverno freddissimo: romanzo. I narratori di Feltrinelli, 87 (in Italian). Milan: Feltrinelli. OCLC 1572178.
- Cialente, Fausta (1972). Il vento sulla sabbia: romanzo (in Italian). Milan: Mondadori. OCLC 223416696.
- Cialente, Fausta (1976). Interno con figure (in Italian). Rome: Riuniti. OCLC 251671916. A collection of short stories. Includes an autobiographical postface.
- Cialente, Fausta (1976). Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger: romanzo (in Italian). Milan: Mondadori. OCLC 247228244.
References
- ^ a b 'Cialente, Fausta Terni', in Buck, Claire, ed., Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature, 1992, p.422.
- ^ a b c d Ruggiero, Nunzio (2017). "CIALENTE, Fausta". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Rome: Treccani. Retrieved 15 August 2018.
- ^ a b Giuliana Minghelli, 'Cialente, Fausta', in Jane Eldridge Miller, ed., Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing, 2001, p. 66.
- v
- t
- e
- 1947 Ennio Flaiano
- 1948 Vincenzo Cardarelli
- 1949 Giovanni Battista Angioletti
- 1950 Cesare Pavese
- 1951 Corrado Alvaro
- 1952 Alberto Moravia
- 1953 Massimo Bontempelli
- 1954 Mario Soldati
- 1955 Giovanni Comisso
- 1956 Giorgio Bassani
- 1957 Elsa Morante
- 1958 Dino Buzzati
- 1959 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
- 1960 Carlo Cassola
- 1961 Raffaele La Capria
- 1962 Mario Tobino
- 1963 Natalia Ginzburg
- 1964 Giovanni Arpino
- 1965 Paolo Volponi
- 1966 Michele Prisco
- 1967 Anna Maria Ortese
- 1968 Alberto Bevilacqua
- 1969 Lalla Romano
- 1970 Guido Piovene
- 1971 Raffaello Brignetti
- 1972 Giuseppe Dessì
- 1973 Manlio Cancogni
- 1974 Guglielmo Petroni
- 1975 Tommaso Landolfi
- 1976 Fausta Cialente
- 1977 Fulvio Tomizza
- 1978 Ferdinando Camon
- 1979 Primo Levi
- 1980 Vittorio Gorresio
- 1981 Umberto Eco
- 1982 Goffredo Parise
- 1983 Mario Pomilio
- 1984 Pietro Citati
- 1985 Carlo Sgorlon
- 1986 Maria Bellonci
- 1987 Stanislao Nievo
- 1988 Gesualdo Bufalino
- 1989 Giuseppe Pontiggia
- 1990 Sebastiano Vassalli
- 1991 Paolo Volponi
- 1992 Vincenzo Consolo
- 1993 Domenico Rea
- 1994 Giorgio Montefoschi
- 1995 Mariateresa Di Lascia
- 1996 Alessandro Barbero
- 1997 Claudio Magris
- 1998 Enzo Siciliano
- 1999 Dacia Maraini
- 2000 Ernesto Ferrero
- 2001 Domenico Starnone
- 2002 Margaret Mazzantini
- 2003 Melania Gaia Mazzucco
- 2004 Ugo Riccarelli
- 2005 Maurizio Maggiani
- 2006 Sandro Veronesi
- 2007 Niccolò Ammaniti
- 2008 Paolo Giordano
- 2009 Tiziano Scarpa
- 2010 Antonio Pennacchi
- 2011 Edoardo Nesi
- 2012 Alessandro Piperno
- 2013 Walter Siti
- 2014 Francesco Piccolo
- 2015 Nicola Lagioia
- 2016 Edoardo Albinati
- 2017 Paolo Cognetti
- 2018 Helena Janeczek
- 2019 Antonio Scurati
- 2020 Sandro Veronesi
- 2021 Emanuele Trevi
- 2022 Mario Desiati