Giovanni Arpino is one of the most puzzling authors in contemporary Italian literature because he defies a neat classification within the major narrative trends of the past decades. A distinctive stylist whose novels varied in theme throughout his more th an thirty-year career, Arpino can be seen as an exception to the axiom that every great author writes the same book over and over. Yet, beyond the variety of his writing, it is possible to note certain attitudes and approaches common to his body of work.

Arpino was born in Pola in 1927 but studies and grew up in the Langhe region of Piedmont, the area south of Turin that also appears in the novels of Cesare Paves and Beppe Fenoglio, two important Piedmontese writers who were Alpino's contemporaries. His first works of fiction were published in 1947 in the famous literary magazine 900. He was the editor of many newspapers...