Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) was born in the countryside near Turin in northern Italy. His translations of Hermann Melville, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Daniel Defoe influenced his contemporaries, and the wider reading public. Pavese also worked at the Turin publisher Einaudi, where he went on to become the editorial director. He wrote poetry, essays and fiction, and kept diaries. In 1950, Pavese won the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious award for literature, for The Moon and the Bonfires. Later the same year, he committed suicide.