Luigi Malerba

Luigi Malerba (11 November 1927 – 8 May 2008), born Luigi Bonardi, was an Italian author who wrote short stories, historical novels, and screenplays. He have been part of the Neoavanguardia and who co-founded Gruppo 63, a literary movement based on Marxism and Structuralism. Some of his most famous novels are La scoperta dell'alfabeto, The serpent, What Is This Buzzing, Do You Hear It Too?, Dopo il pescecane, Testa d'argento, Il fuoco greco, Le pietre volanti, Roman ghosts and Ithaca Forever: Penelope speaks. He also wrote several stories and novels for kids with Tonino Guerra.

He was the first writer to win the Prix Médicis étranger in 1970. He also won the  [it] in 1979, the  [it] in 1987, the Grinzane Cavour Prize in 1989 (with  [it] and Raffaele La Capria), the Viareggio Prize in 1992, the Flaiano Prize in 1990 and the  [it] in 1992. His name popped up among the candidates to the Nobel prize for literature in 2000.^[1]

The memory[]

An amusing and amused writer, Malerba is a curious man: curious about language, history, customs, plots and coincidences of life. Not by chance he moves from the novel to the linguistic essay, to screenplays for cinema and television, to children's novels.^[2]

Umberto Eco said about him: "Malerba was classified as a post-modern author, but this is definition is not accurate. The author of What Is This Buzzing, Do You Hear It Too? is always maliciously ironic, alternating clues to ambiguities".^[3] He was one of the most important exponents of the Italian literary movement called Neoavanguardia, along with Balestrini, Sanguineti, and Manganelli.

 [it] wrote about him: "Malerba likes language as a factor of unbalance. And this seems to be the only possible reality for him. [...] The most congenial status for Malerba is emptiness. And he " fills up " with it: his language is always digging further ^[4]

And Paolo Mauri: "Malerba operated within the Neoavanguardia: he liked the idea of flipping the tables of the old discussions to go for new, experimental arguments. With his novels The serpent and What Is This Buzzing, Do You Hear It Too? he started to play on the edge of the paradox , with investigations that lead to nothing, heroes born from the mind of the writer and made to live on the page to then reveal the trick, in a new, completely original language. He then continued to innovate, from one novel to the other, both topics and styles".^[5]

Bibliography[]

Stories and novels[]

• La scoperta dell'alfabeto (1963)
• Il serpente (1966)
• Salto mortale (1968, winner of Prix Médicis)
• Il protagonista (1973)
• Mozziconi (1975)
• Storiette (1977)
• Il pataffio (1978)
• Le galline pensierose (1980)
• Diario di un sognatore (1981)
• Storiette tascabili (1984)
• Il pianeta azzurro (1986, winner of the winner of the Premio Mondello)
• Testa d'argento (1988, winner of Grinzane Cavour Prize)
• Il fuoco greco (1990, set in the Byzantine Empire)
• Le pietre volanti (1992, winner of the Viareggio Prize and the Premio Feronia-Città di Fiano)
• Le maschere (1994)
• Itaca per sempre (1997)
• Pinocchio con gli stivali
• Città e dintorni (essays, 2001)
• Il circolo di Granada (2002)
• Fantasmi romani (2006)

English translations[]

Two of Malerba's books have been translated into English (as of July 2007). Both were translated by William Weaver and are currently out of print.

• Il serpente as The Serpent
• Salto mortale as What Is This Buzzing? Do You Hear It Too?

In addition, another of Malerba's novels, Itaca per sempre, has been translated by Douglas Grant Heise (as Ithaca Forever). It will appear in print in 2019, published by the University of California Press.

Scenarios[]

• The Overcoat (1952)
• The Beach (1954)
• Women and Soldiers (1954)
• Catch As Catch Can (1967)
• The Girl and the General (1967)
• Oh, Grandmother's Dead (1969)

References[]

External links[]

• Luigi Malerba at IMDb