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

Edith Bruck

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Edith Bruck (© Gabriella Romani)

Edith Bruck (née Edith Steinschreiber) was born on 3 May 1931 in Tiszabèrcel, Hungary. In 1944 she was deported with her family to the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, Christianstadt, Landsberg, and Bergen-Belsen, where she lost both her parents and a brother. After the end of WW2, she briefly returned to Hungary, lived in what was then Czechoslovakia, and soon after moved to Israel, where she stayed for three years. While working as a dancer for an itinerant dancing troupe, she arrived in Italy in 1954 and resolved to settle in Rome where she has lived ever since. 

Her first attempt to write about her deportation and imprisonment in the Nazi extermination camps goes back to the first months after her liberation from Auschwitz, when she began writing a memoir, which, however, got lost during her multiple relocations. Once in Italy, she resumed her writing project and published her first book Chi ti ama così (1959; Who Loves You Like This, 2001), beginning a long and prolific literary career. In her search for an effective literary voice, Bruck adopted the Italian language, which, according to the author, provided her with an emotional detachment that enabled her to describe her experiences with the Shoah. She has published more than 30 volumes between prose and poetry. Most of her literary production has been devoted to Holocaust testimony, notably with the more recent Quanta stella c’è nel cielo (2009), La donna dal cappotto verde (2012), and Il pane perduto (2021), but she has also written several novels about her tumultuous and long-lasting relationship with the poet Nelo Risi ― Mio splendido disastro (1979), L’amore offeso (2002), La rondine sul termosifone (2017), and Ti lascio dormire (2019), and Il silenzio degli amanti (1997) revolves around the themes of friendship and homosexual love. Bruck has also produced several volumes of poetry: Il tatuaggio (1975), In difesa del padre (1980), and Monologo (1990), which were republished in Specchi (2005), Versi vissuti (2018), and Tempi (2021). 

In the 1970s Bruck became involved in the theatre and started to work in television. Her first play, Sulla porta (1971), was staged in Milan at the Piccolo Teatro and in Rome at the Teatro Quirinale. She was one of the founders of the Teatro della Maddalena in Rome, where Mara, Maria, Marianna (co-written with Dacia Maraini and Maricla Boggio) opened in 1973, followed in the subsequent year by Per il tuo bene. She worked for RAI until the 1990s as director and screenwriter. She directed the films: Improvviso (1979), starring Valeria Moriconi and Giacomo Rosselli; Quale Sardegna? (1983), based on Sea and Sardinia by D.H. Lawrence; and Un altare per la madre (1986) with Franco Nero and Angela Winkel. She wrote the screenplays of Fotografando Patrizia (1984), directed by Salvatore Sampieri, and Per odio per amore (1991), directed by Nelo Risi. She made several documentaries, among which: Nani come noi (1989), Dedicato a Franz Drago (1991), Dietro il buio (1994), and Attilio Bertolucci: la camera da letto (1996). A film, directed by Nelo Risi, was made in 1966 based on her book Andremo in città, starring Geraldine Chaplin and Nino Castelnuovo. 

Edith Bruck’s life and work have been brought to the screen. A film titled A látogatás (The Visit), on her visit to her village of origin, was made in 1982 by Hungarian director László Révész. In 2014, director Roberto Faenza turned Bruck’s novel Quanta stella c’è nel cielo (2009) into a film entitled Anita B. She was also featured in the short film Testimonianza sul razzismo, broadcast on RAI on 4 June 2002 and in the documentary Edith, broadcast on La7 on 25 January 2023, for which she received the Nastro D’Argento prize in 2024.

Bruck is the winner of several literary prizes, among which Premio Rapallo Carige (1989) for Lettera alla madre, Premio Viareggio (2009) for Quanta stella c’è nel cielo, Premio Strega Giovani (2021) for Il pane perduto, and the Premio Campiello (2023) for her career. She has gained national and international recognition for her writings in Holocaust testimony and, more generally, in contemporary Italian literature. She received a laurea honoris causa in Communication and Journalism from the University of Roma Tre in 2018, in Modern Philology from the University of Macerata in 2019, and in Philosophy from the University of Sassari in 2023. Among other honours, in 2021 she received the Cavalieriato di Gran Croce, conferred by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella.  

Edith Bruck’s narrative and poetry have been translated into Hungarian as well as English, French, German, Danish, Hebrew, and Dutch. She has translated poetry from Hungarian into Italian by Illyés Gyula, Jòzsef Attila, and Miklós Radnóti, and from English into Italian by Ruth Feldman.  
 

Compiled by Gabriella Romani (Seton Hall, NJ)