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Concept
Elsa Morante
Summary
Elsa Morante (ˈelsa moˈrante, ˈɛl-; 18 August 1912 25 November 1985) was an Italian novelist, poet, translator and children's books author. Her novel La storia (History) is included in the Bokklubben World Library List of 100 Best Books of All Time.
Elsa Morante was born in Rome in 1912, the daughter of Irma (née Poggibonsi), a schoolteacher, and Augusto Morante. Her mother came from a Jewish family in Modena. When she was a teenager Morante discovered that Francesco Lo Monaco, a family neighbor, was her biological father. Except for a brief period during World War II, she resided in Rome until her death in 1985.
Morante started writing at an early age. Without having much support from her parents, she relied mostly on self-education. She began writing short stories in the mid-1930s. Some were published in various publications and journals, including periodicals for children. Her first book, a collection of short stories called Il Gioco Segreto (The Secret Game), was published in 1941. In the same year she married fellow novelist and film critic Alberto Moravia. In 1942 she wrote her first children's book, Le Bellissime avventure di Caterì dalla Trecciolina (republished in 1959 as Le straordinarie avventure di Caterina).
During the German occupation of Italy late in World War II, Morante and Moravia, fearful because of their Jewish heritage, fled Rome to repair in Southern Lazio, in a village near Fondi and where there were several poor families of shepherds, called in the past, with an offensive term, "ciociari" in the modern Roman dialect. The experience would inspire Morante's La storia (1974) and Moravia's La Ciociara (translated in English in 1957 as "Two Women" and later made into a film by Vittorio De Sica). During her time in the territory of Fondi, she began translating the work of Katherine Mansfield. Morante decided to briefly return to war-torn Rome at great personal risk to retrieve the manuscript of what would be her first published Menzogna e sortilegio and get winter clothes.
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