Francesca Sanvitale

Francesca Sanvitale (17 May 1928 – 9 February 2011) was an Italian novelist and journalist, "one of Italy's most renowned contemporary authors".

Life Born in Milan, Francesca Sanvitale lived in Florence for two decades, gaining a degree there in Italian literature before moving to Rome in 1961. She wrote television plays and contributed to cultural programmes for RAI.

Her first novel was Il cuore borghese (1972). Madre e figlia (1980), a semi-autobiographical novel about an intense relationship between a mother and her illegitimate child, won both the Fregene Prize and the Pozzale Luigi Russo Prize.

She died in Rome.

Works Il cuore borghese [The bourgeois heart], 1972 Madre e figlia, 1980 L'uomo del parco: romanzo [The man in the heart], 1984 La realtà è un dono: racconti [Reality is a gift: stories], 1987 Mettendo a fuoco : pagine di letteratura e realtà, 1988 (tr.) Il diavolo in corpo by Raymond Radiguet, 1989. Translated from the French Le Diable au corps (1923) Verso Paola, 1991 Il figlio dell'Impero, 1993 Tre favole dell'ansia e dell'ombra, 1994 Separazioni [Separations], 1997 Camera ottica: pagine di letteratura e realtà, 1999 L'ultima casa prima del bosco, 2003 L'inizio è in autunno, 2008