Domenico Starnone

Domenico Starnone
Starnone at a film launch
Born (1943-02-15) 15 February 1943 (age 81)
Saviano, Naples
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s)Novelist, journalist, teacher and screenwriter
Years active1970-present
SpouseAnita Raja
ChildrenViola Starnone

Domenico Starnone (born 15 February 1943) [1][2] is an Italian writer, screenwriter, and journalist.

His work has been translated into English, German and several other languages. These include Prima esecuzione (2007, as First Execution, 2009) and Confidenza (2019, as Trust, 2019).[3][4][5]

His novel Via Gemito won Italy's highest literary honour, the Strega Prize, as well as the Naples Prize for Literature, in 2001[6] and was also a finalist in the prestigious Campiello Prize prize that year. Said to be his masterpiece, the novel centers on a Neopolitan train conductor, Federí, facing a life filled with frustration, who unloads his dissatisfaction on his wife and eldest son, the novel's narrator. Translated into English by Oonagh Stransky, The House on Via Gemito was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2024.[7]

His thirteenth work of fiction, Ties was his second to be translated into English, and was awarded the Bridge Prize in 2017, [8] The Bridge Book Award project seeks to unite Italian and American cultures and strengthen mutual understanding.[9][10]

In reports dated 2006 (by Luigi Galella), and more recent work in 2017 by Arjuna Tuzzi and Michele A. Cortelazzo of the University of Padova, Starnone was proposed as the author writing under the pen name, Elena Ferrante - or possibly his wife, Anita Raja.[11] In published interviews, Ferrante has dismissed the allegations, saying "My identity, my sex can be found in my writing." And suggesting that the attention to the question is more illustrative of the character of contemporary Italians than anything else.

  1. ^ "Domenico Starnone". IMDB.
  2. ^ "Domenico Starnone". Words Without Borders.
  3. ^ Reynolds, Michael (11 October 2021). "The Three Lives of Domenico Starnone". Reading in Translation.
  4. ^ Jacobs, Steven (11 October 2021). "Degrees of Separation: Jhumpa Lahiri's Translation of Starnone's Trust". Reading in Translation.com.
  5. ^ Parks, Tim (2 June 2023). "A boy remembers his fierce father in a rich family novel". The Washington Post, Books.
  6. ^ Pettitt, Clare (16 June 2023). "The House on Via Gremito". Times Literary Suppliment TLS.
  7. ^ "The house on Via gemito Longlisted for the International Booker Prize". Europa Editions.
  8. ^ "A disquieting Book, Domenico Starnone's Ties". On Art and Aesthetics.
  9. ^ "First Edition 2015, Candidates". Premio Letterario The Bridge.
  10. ^ "Domenico Starnone in Conversation with his translator, Jumpa Lahiri". YouTube - Politics & Prose Bookshop Channel. 22 March 2017.
  11. ^ Sotgiu, Elisa (31 March 2021). "Have Italian Scholars Figured out the Identiy". LitHub.com.