Hi, I am very curious to assess to what extent Italian literature (especially from the 20th century onwards) is known abroad. (I am Italian by the way). As the audience of the forum is international, it seems a good place to ask. So, whom have read? what do you think? Best , E
Umberto Eco is fairly famous. I've seen a bunch of people reading The Name of the Rose at school or on the bus. Italo Calvino is another famous one. Those two are probably the most famous Italian writers in America. Sadly, my experience with 20th century Italian writers is very limited. I've read Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, and it was the best Holocaust memoir I've ever read. Some Italian writers I've heard of but haven't read yet include Italo Svevo, Alberto Moravia, and Luigi Pirandello (I've read a few of his poems but not enough to say that I've "read" him). I'm sure I'm missing a few important people, but those are the ones I can remember.
Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose was very popular in the United States, although I personally didn't read it. A friend has recommended Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and I've put it on my list. Of course, while it's not 20th century, I read Dante Alighieri's Inferno (The Divine Comedy) in college.
Umberto Eco is famous. I have a copy of Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, but I've only read a small bit of it so far. It's interesting, though!
Italio Calvino (who I have a lot of and really like) and Dante who I have the complete works of in English. I love Dante's work a lot. Other than that I'm largely ignorant.
Primo Levi's Monkey's Wrench was the only modern Italian that I've read, it was okay - it was about...welding, mostly, and traveling around the world for jobs. But if by Italian you include ancient Roman....the list would grow.
Unfortunately, the only Italian writers I've really heard of outside this thread are Petrarch, Dante, and St. Francis. We learned about Petrarch tangentially when learning about sonnets in high school (it was a British literature class, so the focus was on Spenser and Shakespeare), and when talking about the humanists in a college history course. Dante I think everyone has probably heard of. And I've been educated in schools run by Franciscans for the past 4 or 5 years, so I've read a little bit of St. Francis' writings.
I can't say any Italian writers spring to mind. But I'm an American. We tend to know very little that occurs outside our country ;-).
I recently read The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano. He is also a theoretical physicist, which is awesome! Only others I know are Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino, who are both pretty well respected in the US.
