Viola Ardone

Viola Ardone was the at the centre of one of the most recent and important literary sensations in Italian publishing: her debut novel The Children‘s Train (HarperCollins, 2021) has been a huge success both in Italy and abroad, translated into over 30 languages, and made into a film by Cristina Comencini, released on Netflix. The Unbreakable Heart of Olivia Denaro (HarperVia, 2023) is another bestseller: after telling the story of the “welcome trains” that brought thousands of poor children from southern to northern Italy between 1946 and 1950, the author continues her exploration of 20th-century Italy, focusing on the adventures of a girl who challenges the country’s social conventions in a Sicilian town in the 1960s. Grande meraviglia was released in 2023, also by Einaudi. Latest work translated to German: Was wissen sie vom Freisein (Bertelsmann, 2024).