The Italian novelist, translator, editor, and journalist Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) helped to prepare the ground for the Italian neorealist movement.

Elio Vittorini was born on July 23, 1908, at Siracusa, Sicily, the son of a railroad employee. His formal education was scant and rudimentary; after a few years at a technical school he left Sicily at the age of 17 and worked at road construction near Udine in northern Italy. In the late 1920s he quit road work and moved to Florence, where he settled with his wife, Salvatore Quasimodo's sister. There he held a job as proofreader for the daily La Nazione and for some time was editor of the review Solaria. During this time he began writing short stories, which appeared in Solaria. He learned English from an old printer, who had been abroad, and began translating American fiction; then he was forced to leave the paper, suffering from...