(by John Phillips).
Italian writer Sebastiano
Vassalli has died at the age of 73.
The novelist won many top Italian literary prizes during a
highly prolific career, and also contributed to several
newspapers.
He passed away in hospital after a long illness.
Vassalli, who was born in Genoa in 1941, made his
breakthrough in 1990 with La Chimera, a historical novel based
on a true story about a young woman who was persecuted as a
witch in the early 17th century.
Vassalli referred to extant trial documents to tell the
story of Antonia, an orphan who was raised by nuns and who was
found guilty at the age of 20 of "having relations with the
devil" and burned at the stake on September 11, 1610, on orders
of the bishop of Novara.
The novel won Italy's prestigious Strega award and became a
Campiello literary prize finalist.
In May, the novelist was nominated for the 2015 Nobel
Literature Prize.
In addition, Vassalli was due to collect a Campiello prize
for lifetime achievement in September.
Vassalli carried out meticulous historical research for his
novels, depicting Italy from the barbarian invasions of the
peninsula to the Middle Ages, the Counter-Reformation, the Great
War, fascism, and the social strife of the 1970s.
In 2007 this creative path climaxed with a collection of 12
exemplary short stories titled The Italian, many of them
critical of his countrymen and women.
Vassalli never considered the historical novel as
entertainment and fiercely opposed fashionable literary society,
preferring to remain aloof from literary cocktail parties and
pontificating on the problems of the nation in articles
published in Corriere della Sera daily newspaper.
Born in the port city of Genoa on October 24, 1941, he was
brought up by his aunts in the northern city of Novara, where he
remained for most of his life.
At university in Milan, where he submitted a thesis on art
and psychoanalysis, he joined a vanguard young writers' movement
known as Gruppo '63, writing experimental novels such as
Narcisso (Narcissus) and Tempo di Massacro (Time of Slaughter)
until in 1983 he wrote Arkadia, a ruthless critique of the group
to which he had belonged.
In 1984 he attracted critics' attention with The Night of
the Comet, a tribute to and reconstruction of the life of poet
Dino Campana.
A short time before his death Vassalli had completed yet
another novel titled Io, Partenope (I, a Neapolitan), due out on
September 12.
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