Elio Vittorini

Elio Vittorini was born in Siracusa, Sicily in 1908. An acclaimed translator (Defoe, Faulkner, Lawrence, Steinbeck and Somerset Maugham) and broadcaster and activist all his life, it wasn’t until 1941 that Conversations in Sicily first appeared. A highly outspoken critic of Mussolini and his fascist government,Vittorini was arrested and jailed in 1942. He died in 1966.