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Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW)

Dacia Maraini

Dacia_Maraini_2012 (G.M. Ireneo Alessi [Sinix] WIkiCOmmons CC BY-SA 2.0).jpg
Dacia Maraini, 2012 (Photo: G.M. Ireneo Alessi [Sinix] via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0)

The daughter of well-known ethnologist Fosco Maraini, Dacia Maraini was born in 1936 and spent her early childhood in Japan where her father went to conduct research. Because of her parents’ anti-Fascist views, the family was confined to a concentration camp during the final years of the war. For the first few years after their return from Japan, they lived in Bagheria, Sicily, at the ancestral home of her mother, painter Topazia Alliata. Maraini studied in Palermo, Florence, and Rome, beginning her writing career with articles in literary magazines.

Her first novel, La vacanza, was published in 1962. The second, L’età del malessere, won the International Formentor Prize in 1963 and was translated into twelve languages. She subsequently published many more novels, several investigative studies, poetry collections, and essays. Her works have been translated into twenty-two languages, including Hindi and Macedonian. Among her translated works are: Memorie di una ladra (1973); Donna in guerra (1975); Lettere a Marina (1980); Il treno per Helsinki (1984), a quasi-autobiographical novel which reconstructs the failure of the 1960s movements; Isolina (1985); La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990); Viaggiando con passo di volpe. Poesie 1983-1991 (1991); Bagheria (1993), a narrative memoir on Sicily; Cercando Emma (1993), a study of Flaubert’s Emma Bovary; Voci (1994); and Buio (1999), a collection of short stories with child protagonists. 

She has won major literary prizes, notably the Premio Campiello for La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa and the Premio Strega for her collection of short stories Buio. Both La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa and Bagheria stayed on Italy’s bestseller lists for almost two years. She has herself translated into Italian works by Thomas Kyd, Ignacy Witkiewicz Stanislaw, and Joseph Conrad.

Maraini has also written extensively for the theatre. While continuing to publish novels and poetry, she co-founded the Teatro del Porcospino in the 1960s and established the feminist experimental theatre La Maddalena in Rome in 1973. The American literary magazine Aphra published her play Manifesto in instalments during the course of 1972 and 1973, and a production was subsequently presented at the Provincetown Playhouse. Another play, Maria Stuarda, was produced at La Mama Theatre in New York and at the Battersea Arts Centre in London (dir. Nicolette Kay), receiving the City Limits and Time Out Critics’ Choice British Premiere award in 1992. Mary Stuart was also produced in Holland at the Publieke Theatre, in Spain at the Teatro Español de Madrid (dir. Hemilio Hernandez), and in Montevideo, Uruguay, at the Teatro Candela in 1986 (dir. Marcelino Dufau), as well as in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and at California State University, Hayward, in 1990. I sogni di Clitennestra was performed by the City Troupe in New York in 1989 and in London in 1994 (dir. Nicolette Kay). Other plays include Dialogo di una prostituta con un suo cliente, performed in London by the Monstrous Regiment at the East End Theatre, 1980-81 (dir. Ann Mitchell), Stravaganza, performed in Vienna in 1987 at the Künstlerhaus (dir. Johanna Thomek), and in Australia, Brazil, and Germany. Mela was performed in London by Muzikansky in 1993 (dir. Nicolette Kay). 

Several of her books have been adapted for the stage and film. La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa was adapted for the stage by Maraini herself in 1991 at the request of the Teatro Stabile of Catania. She has written screenplays of her works for such directors as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Ferreri, Carlo Di Palma, and Margarethe Von Trotta. 

She continues to be active in feminist causes and as a commentator on politics and society, especially in columns for newspapers and weeklies. Her articles have appeared regularly in newspapers like Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, L’Unità, and Paese Sera. Some of these were published in the collection La bionda, la bruna, e l’asino (1987). There followed Fare teatro. 1966-2000 in 2000, which collected nearly all her theatrical works; in 2000, Amata scrittura, a volume of essays inspired by conversations with other writers; in 2001, La nave per Kobe, the tale of the Maraini family’s voyage from Brindisi to Kobe, Japan, when her father received a study grant to conduct ethnological research after tearing up his membership of the Fascist party in front of his father (Dacia was just two years old at the time); in 2006, I giorni di Antigone, a collection of newspaper articles Maraini had written in the previous five years, divided into ‘Mondo, politica’, ‘Animali: nostri simili?’, ‘Violenza contro le donne’, and ‘Dialogo con i lettori’, where the underlying motif of the myth of Antigone reminds us of the power of subversive acts moved by empathy and brotherly love; and, in 2008, Il treno dell’ultima notte, a novel centred on the depths of 20th-century totalitarianism that recounts a voyage from the Shoah to Budapest in 1956, the year of the revolution.

In 2001, the children’s book La pecora Dolly was published by Fabbri, and in 2004, the novel Colomba was published by Rizzoli, in which Maraini accompanies her readers through the discovery of a fairytale-like story which delicately probes the motivations and emotions that guide the human spirit. 2007 saw the author’s return to the theatre with Passi affrettati [Hurried Steps], published by Edizioni Lanieri. The play consists of seven stories of violence against women, all true testimonies collected by Amnesty International from around the world. The play has been staged in the UK, under the direction of Nicolette Kay, in France by the company Talon Rouge (dir. Catherine Javaloyes), and in Spain by the company Crit, directed by Maraini herself and with the extraordinary participation of Rosana Pastor.

Maraini’s most recent work includes: Corpo felice (2018), a semi-autobiographical novel that tackles the themes of motherly love and the loss of one’s child; the epistolary novel Trio. Storia di due amiche, un uomo e la peste a Messina (2020); and Ti parlo, mi ascolti? Tre donne sul palcoscenico (2023), in which she returns to her life-long passion, theatre, with three pièces centred around three women who, despite belonging to different historical epochs, share the same need of being heard.

Compiled by Alex Standen (Birmingham), updated by Maria Morelli (London)