Elsa Morante

Elsa Morante
Morante with Alberto Moravia at Capri in the 1940s
Born	(1912-08-18)18 August 1912 Rome, Italy
Died	25 November 1985(1985-11-25) (aged 73) Rome, Italy
Occupation	Author
Nationality	Italian
Notable works	La storia (History)
Spouse	Alberto Moravia (1941-1961)

Elsa Morante (18 August 1912 – 25 November 1985) was an Italian novelist, best known for her novel La storia (History), which appears in the Bokklubben World Library, a list of the hundred best books of all time.

Elsa Morante was born in Rome, Italy, in 1912, the daughter of Irma (née Poggibonsi), a schoolteacher, and Francesco Lo Monaco, from Sicily. Her mother was Jewish and her father was Sicilian. Her stepfather was Augusto Morante. Except for a period during World War II, she resided in her home city until her death in 1985.

She married the novelist Alberto Moravia in 1941, and through him she met many of the leading Italian thinkers and writers of the day.

Morante began writing short stories which appeared in various publications and periodicals, including periodicals for children, in the 1930s. Her first book was a collection of some of the stories, Il Gioco Segreto, published in 1941. It was followed in 1942 by a children's book, Le Bellissime avventure di Caterì dalla Trecciolina (rewritten in 1959 as Le straordinarie avventure di Caterina).

Towards the end of World War II, Morante with her husband, novelist and film critic Alberto Moravia, fearful because both were of half Jewish descent, fled to the area around the Ciociara region near Rome, a flight that inspired Morante's "La storia" and Moravia's "La Ciociara" (translated into English as "Two Women" and later made into a film with Sophia Loren). Southern Italy is the backdrop for much of her work. She began translating Katherine Mansfield during this period, as well as working on her first novel—she even risked returning to war-torn Rome to retrieve the manuscript of "Menzogna e sortilegio" and obtain winter clothes.

Following the war, Morante and Moravia met American translator William Weaver, who helped them to find an American audience. Her first novel, 1948's Menzogna e sortilegio, won the prestigious Viareggio Prize, and was later published in the United States as House of Liars in 1951. However, Morante and others found the English translation quite poorly done, to Morante's great disappointment.