Corrado Alvaro

Corrado Alvaro (born in San Luca, Calabria, in 1895, died in Rome in 1956) was an Italian writer, journalist, playwright and poet. He lived through the end of liberal Italy, the rise of Fascism and the postwar years, and his attention to the hardship of the south made him one of the most closely observed chroniclers of rural life in his time.

He came from a modest family: his father was a village schoolteacher and his mother came from a family of small landowners. He fought in the First World War, was wounded, and after graduating in literature in Milan in 1919 began working as a journalist in Bologna and for the Corriere della Sera. As a correspondent in Paris and later in Berlin, Turkey and the Soviet Union, he saw the growth of authoritarian regimes at first hand. In 1925 he backed the anti-Fascist manifesto drafted by Benedetto Croce, which brought him under the watch of Mussolini's government.

His fiction blends realism with an almost epic view of the peasants of Aspromonte, whom he portrays crushed by the greed of landowners. Revolt in Aspromonte, published in 1930, is regarded by many critics as his finest work. Man Is Strong, from 1938, defends the individual against totalitarian oppression and grew out of his journey to the Soviet Union. His other books trace the pull between a longing for a simple pastoral life and the lure of the city and material success.

After the war he returned to Italy and became a prominent figure in its literary life, serving as secretary of the national writers' union and winning the Strega Prize in 1951 for Quasi una vita. He died in Rome in 1956, leaving several novels unfinished. He is remembered in Calabria and as one of the first authors to write about the 'Ndrangheta in the press and in literature.