Dacia Maraini Nominated for Booker Prize

Readers of our fiction and poetry will be pleased to know that Italica Press author (and Italian novelist, essayist, journalist, playwright and poet), Dacia Maraini, has been nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2011, the most prestigious literary award in the UK.

The International Prize is awarded for an author’s life work; and Italica Press has played some part in bringing this work to English-speaking audiences. Over the years we’ve published an English edition of her Donna in guerra (Woman at War, 1988), translated by Mara Benetti and Elspeth Spottiswood; her short story “Maria,” translated by Martha King in our anthology New Italian Women (edited by Martha King in 1989); and selections from her poetry in our anthology Contemporary Italian Women Poets, edited and translated by Cinzia Sartini Blum and Lara Trubowitz (2001).

We’ve long been impressed by Maraini’s clarity and strength, her superb style, and her wise engagement with issues of women’s voices and personal experiences. She has been a rare presence in Italian letters over the past generation and she richly deserves this nomination, the award, and further recognition of her work in the English-speaking world.