Novelist, professor, journalist, and screenwriter, P.M. Pasinetti has been instrumental in promoting Italian culture in the United States since the 1930s. At home both in Venice and Los Angeles, Pasinetti in his work embraces the diverse and complex experiences of life on two continents. Without surrendering to either nostalgia or sentimental regionalism, he has written novels of intellectual breadth, filled with unique characters and settings.

Pasinetti is the architect of a unified oeuvre. Each succeeding novel picks up and develops situations left marginal in previous works, thus establishing a dialogue between his novels. By writing his new work in the light of his old, Pasinetti creates a narrative world that is neither conclusive nor definitive, that probes and questions itself and defies ideological absolutes. In Rosso veneziano (1959) Marco Partibon, one of Pasinetti's most remarkable characters, observes: "Una storia non è mai finita di raccontare; tutto è vivo...