Fausta Cialente

Fausta Terni Cialente (29 November 1898 – 11 March 1994) was an Italian novelist, journalist and political activist. She is a recipient of the Strega Prize.

Early life Cialente was born on 29 November 1898 in Cagliari, Sardinia. She was the second child of Alfredo Cialente, an army officer originally from the Abruzzo region in central Italy and Elsa Wieselberger who had trained as a soprano and came from a musical family in Trieste. Her elder brother Renato (1897–1943) became an actor and appeared in many films. Fausta's early life was marked by upheaval as the family followed the movements of her father. In 1921 she married Enrico Terni (1876–1960), a banker from a Jewish family of Italian origin who had settled in Alexandria, Egypt in the early nineteenth century. Enrico was a musician and a composer. Cialente's only daughter, Lionella (called Lili), was born in 1923. Although based in Alexandria the family would spend long holidays in Italy.

Many of Cialente's subsequent stories were set in Egypt. "The position of her female characters preoccupies Cialente throughout her work, not least in the semi-autobiographical Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger", which won the Strega Prize.

She died in Pangbourne on 11 March 1994.

Works

Republished in Interno con figure (1976).

A collection of short stories. Includes an autobiographical postface.

Translated into English