Diary
Quasi una vita
Not translated into English
Corrado Alvaro · 1950
Synopsis
The notes of a writer, drawn from the notebooks he kept for twenty years, from the end of the twenties to the post-war period. In them he portrays people he knew, records his observations on peoples, his travels and his stays, Berlin first, then the Soviet Union and Italy, and sets down the political climate under Fascism, the choices of those who opposed it, the war, the family and the stories of his native South.
Context
The book was published by Bompiani, in Milan, in 1950, with the subtitle “Journal d'un écrivain” (A Writer's Journal). Rather than memoirs, the author collected in it notes taken in his notebooks from 1927 to 1947, which mix public events and private life, from the German years to the stay in Soviet Russia, then to the Italy of fascism and war. It has appeared in French under the title “Presque une vie”, with the same subtitle.
Who it is for
A diary made up of notes and portraits, to be read in fragments, in whatever order one likes.
Prizes and reception
According to the Library of Congress, the book won the Strega Prize in 1951.
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