Mario Desiati

How many cities do expats live in? Originally from Martina Franca (Taranto), Desiati lives in Rome, but has lived in Milan, Bari and Berlin. He made his 2003 fiction debut with Neppure quando è notte (Pequod) followed by Vita precaria e amore eterno (2006), Ternitti (2011), Il libro di amore proibito (2013) (all Mondadori), and Candore (Einaudi, 2016). He has curated anthologies of Italian authors for German publisher Wieser Verlag. In 2021, he published Spatriati (Einaudi), a photograph of a generation that has ‘left’ and now finds itself ‘outside a common idea.’ Powered by word of mouth, the novel’s success gradually grew until it won the Strega Prize in 2022. Desiati edits and directs the Italian fiction collection Nonsololimoni for Nonsolo Verlag. Latest work translated to German: Spatriati (Wagenbach, 2024).