Bassani, Giorgio [key], 1916–2000, Italian novelist. The recurrent background for his complex, analytic narratives about Jewish bourgeois life in Italy was the growth of fascism and anti-Semitism. A major theme is the dichotomy between the innocence of childhood and the cruelty of history, and he stresses the joy of imagination as the only outlet for the individual's alienated existence. Bassani's slow, elegiac prose constantly probes the secret roots and causes of events in psychological drives and urges. His most notable work, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1962, tr. 1965 and 1977), was made into a film in 1971. Other works that have been issued in English translation include the novellas in Five Stories of Ferrara (1956, tr. 1963; rev. ed. 1965, tr. 1971; rev. ed. with novellas and short stories 1980, tr. as The Novels of Ferrara, 2018), the novel The Heron (1968, tr. 1986), and a verse collection Rolls Royce and Other Poems (pub. in English, 1982).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Italian Literature: Biographies
