Alessandra Lavagnino
Alessandra Lavagnino was born in Naples in 1927 and died in 2018. She grew up in Rome where she graduated in Biology. Her postgraduate research was partly carried out in Palermo, where she continued to live, teaching at the University, working on the campaign to eradicate malaria, and becoming Associate Professor of Parasitology. She was married with two children and two grandchildren. Some of her most important writing appeared in the years following her retirement from academic life.
Lavagnino’s earliest literary publications were stories in magazines such as Amica and Nuova Antologia. Her first novella, I lucertoloni, appeared in 1969 after being awarded the Premio Inedito for its unpublished manuscript, and was later translated into English by William Weaver. Una granita di caffè con panna (1974) may be the first account from a woman’s point of view of life in a society dominated by the Mafia. Leonardo Sciascia praised this novella for both exemplifying and bringing to a close the Pirandellian tradition of truth revealed in madness. The book was originally serialised in Amica magazine as La verità e le mosche, and this was the title chosen for its publication in English as Truth and Flies in 2010.
In fiction and non-fiction, Lavagnino’s favoured vehicle is the short novel or long story, and her most distinctive literary preoccupation is silence. She lyrically dramatises the act of not saying in all its wide variety – from a teenager’s debilitating stammer to the divine decree imposed on John the Baptist’s father, metaphors of the silences which continue to haunt Italian society.
Lavagnino’s non-fiction includes three works dealing with insects and their impact on human beings, told in a form she called 'divulgazione raccontata’ [narrated popularisation], an informal narrative method drawn from her approach to teaching.
Her one full-length novel, Le bibliotecarie di Alessandria (2002), was short-listed for the Premio Strega and the Premio Vittorini, and won New York University’s Zerilli-Marimò Award.
In her later years Lavagnino played a central role in a wider cultural project to record a forgotten part of Italian history. During the Nazi occupation a team of civil servants defied the authorities in order to rescue artworks from the dangers of the Allied invasion and bring them to safety in the Vatican. This operation is commemorated in Un inverno 1943-1944 (2006), which draws on accounts left by those who took part in it. Lavagnino herself appears in Paolo Pisanelli’s film, Un inverno di guerra (BigSur, 2009), which is based on her book.
Her work has been translated into English and other foreign languages.
Compiled by Adam Elgar
Bibliography
Narrative
I lucertoloni (Milan: Mursia, 1969) [novella]
Il fantasma nel sole. Un gotico siciliano (serialised in Amica, 1974) [novella]
Una granita di caffè con panna. Con una nota di Leonardo Sciascia (Milan: Mondadori, 1974; Palermo: Sellerio, 2001) [novella]
Le bibliotecarie di Alessandria (Palermo: Sellerio, 2002) [novel]
La madre dell’ultimo profeta (Rome: Edizioni dell’Altana, 2004) [novella]
Via dei Serpenti [reprint of I lucertoloni] (Palermo: Sellerio, 2005) [novella]
Lavagnino, Alessandra, et al.: Sei colori siciliani (Palermo: Kalós, 2005) [short stories]
Il maestro delle colombe. Un racconto con dodici finali (Rome: Gremese Editore, 2007) [a story completed by high school students from various countries, plus an ending by the author herself] [short stories]
La nonna volante, e altre storie di paesi, di bambini, e di animali per chi ancora non legge e per chi legge (Rome: Edilazio, 2010) [short stories]
Biography and Social History
I Daneu. Una famiglia di antiquari. Con una nota di Leonardo Sciascia (Milan: Rizzoli, 1981; Palermo: Sellerio, 2003)
Un inverno 1943-1944. Testimonianze e ricordi sulle operazioni per la salvaguardia delle opere d’arte italiane durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale (Palermo: Sellerio, 2006)
Divulgazioni raccontate [Works of entomology and epidemiology for the general reader]
Zanzare (Palermo: Sellerio, 1993)
Belli di mamma (Milan: UTET, 1997)
La mala aria. Storia di una lunga malattia narrata in breve (Palermo: Sellerio, 2010)
Lavagnino, Alessandra and Rosaria Merulla [eds]: Sicilia libera dalla malaria. Catalogo della mostra nel cinquantenario dall'inizio della campagna di eradicazione (Palermo: Università, Dipartimento di igiene e microbiologia, Facoltà di medicina e chirurgia, 1997?)
Translations into Italian by Alessandra Lavagnino
Heidi [Translation of Johanna Spyri’s novel for children] (Florence: Giunti Junior, 1978; Milan: Mondadori, Biblioteca per ragazzi, 2014)
Hans Brinker, o, I pattini d’argento [Translation of Mary Mapes Dodge’s children’s novel Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates] (Florence: Giunti-Marzocco, 1984)
Orgoglio e pregiudizio [Translation of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice] (Florence: Giunti-Marzocco, 1990)
Translations into Foreign Languages
English
The Lizards [Translation of I lucertoloni by William Weaver] (New York: Harper and Row, 1972)
The Librarians of Alexandria. A Tale of Two Sisters [Translation of Le bibliotecarie di Alessandria by Teresa Lust] (Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth Press, 2006)
Truth and Flies [Translation of Una granita di caffè con panna by Adam Elgar] (Leicester: Troubador, 2010)
‘A Year in the Shop Window’ [Translation of ‘Un anno in vetrina’ by Adam Elgar] (Stand, 10.3, 2011)
‘The Waterball’ [Translation of ‘La palla d’acqua’ by Adam Elgar] (New Walk, 4, 2012)
‘From The Mother of the Last Prophet (Chapters 1-3) by Alessandra Lavagnino. Translated by Adam Elgar’ (Comparative Critical Studies, 11.1, 2014, pp. 115-129)
Elizabeth the Mother [Translation of La madre dell’ultimo profeta by Adam Elgar] (Pilot Publications: Grove Farm Sawdon, North Yorkshire, 2016)
Slovak
Mrazena kava so slahackou [Translation of Una granita di caffé con panna by Mária Štefánková (Bratislava: Smena, 1978)
Slovenian
Družina Daneu, starinarji [Translation of I Daneu. Una famiglia di antiquari by Vasja Bratina] (Ljubljana: Mladinska Knjiga, 2016)
Spanish
Un granizado de café con nata [Translation of Una granita di caffé con panna by Martín López-Vega González] (Madrid: Errata Naturae Editores, 2011)
Nuestras calles [Translation of Via dei Serpenti by Martín López Vega] (Madrid: Errata Naturae Editores, 2015)
Criticism
Anon: ‘A una biologa-romanziera assegnato il premio ‘L’Inedito’ (Corriere della Sera, 1 March 1968)
Baldacci, Luigi: ‘La decorosa e sinistra Sicilia di una scienziata romanziera’ (Epoca 1227, 7 April 1974)
Benfante, Marcello: ‘Di verità in Sicilia si può morire’ (La Repubblica, 4 July 2001)
Cusimano, Rosanna: ‘Presentazione del romanzo, Le Bibliotecarie di Alessandria’ (Palermo: Accademia Clara Schumann, 2002)
Leuzzi, Giuseppe: ‘Promettente esordio di A. Lavagnino’ (Avanti! Milano, 24 April 1969)
Longo, Nicola: ‘Elisabetta, un’annunciazione mancata’ in «Ubi neque aerugo neque tinea demolitur». Studi in onore di Luigi Pellegrini per i suoi settanta anni ed. Maria Grazia Del Fuoco (Naples: Liguori, 2006) [a study of La madre dell’ultimo profeta]
Marro, Daniela: ‘Tutto ebbe inizio nella nostra terra’ (Il Tempo, 28 August 2003)
McCulloch, Alison: Review of The Librarians of Alexandria (New York Times, 4 June 2006)
Pent, Sergio: ‘Il profumo dei libri salva un gran mare di gente’ (La Stampa, 15 June 2002)
Rohrbaugh, Lisa: Review of The Librarians of Alexandria: A Tale of Two Sisters (Library Journal, 15 March 2006)
Scarsella, Claudia: Alessandra Lavagnino. La verità, la parola, la donna. PhD thesis (Università II di Roma, Tor Vergata, 2008-2009)
Spera, Miriam: Review of Le bibliotecarie di Alessandria (Orizzonti Cristiani, 31 May 2002)
Interviews/in the Media
Pecoraro, Vito: ‘“In viaggio con le zanzare”: intervista ad Alessandra Lavagnino’ (Astrolabe, Centre de Recherche sur la Littérature des Voyages, 2010)