Roberto Pazzi is the best known and most prolific of the so-called new generation of writers who came to the fore in the 1970s and 1980s. He was an established poet before he turned to narrative, having published three books of poetry. Since the publication of his first novel in 1985, Pazzi has received increasing critical attention. Renowned as a master storyteller, he weaves tales that incorporate memory, history, fantasy, mysticism, and religion. The well-known critic Giorgio Bárberi Squarotti called Pazzi's work "probably the finest and most luminous prose of Italian twentieth century narrative" in the 31 October 1987 issue of La Stampa.

Pazzi was born in Ameglia, a town in Liguria near La Spezia, on 18 August 1946. He spent his formative years in Ferrara, a city that was to mark both his temperament as a man and his intellectual growth as an artist. He attended Liceo classico Lodovice Ariosto...