Lavagnino, Alessandra

PERSONAL: Born in Naples, Italy; married; children: two.

ADDRESSES: Home—Palermo, Italy.

CAREER: Writer, novelist, short-story writer, biologist, parasitologist, and educator. University of Palermo, professor of parasitology (retired).

AWARDS, HONORS: Zerilli-Marimò Prize for Italian Fiction, 2002, for Le bibliotecarie di Alessandria.

WRITINGS:

The Lizards, translated by William Weaver, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1972.

Una granita di caffe con panna, A. Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1974.

I Daneu, Rizzoli (Milan, Italy), 1981.

Le bibliotecarie di Alessandria, Sellerio (Palermo, Italy), 2002, published as The Librarians of Alexandria: A Tale of Two Sisters, Steerforth Italia (Hanover, NH), 2006.

La madre dell’ultimo profeta, Edizioni dell’ Altana (Rome, Italy), 2004.

Un inverno: 1943-1944; Testimonianze e ricordi sulle operazioni per la salvaguardia delle opere d’arte italiane durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, Sellerio (Palermo, Italy), 2006.

Contributor to scientific journals and periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Writer and novelist Alessandra Lavagnino is a retired professor of parasitology at the University of Palermo, Italy. A frequent contributor to the scientific press, Lavagnino is also the author of several collections of short stories. Her 1974 novel Una granita di caffe con panna was among the first fictional accounts of the Mafia written from the perspective of a woman, noted a biographer on the Steerforth Press Web site. She has also authored more than fifty papers on tropical disease and associated subjects, the biographer stated.

Lavagnino’s novel The Librarians of Alexandria: A Tale of Two Sisters won the 2002 Zerilli-Marimo Prize, an annual award that recognizes “a new Italian work of fiction deemed especially worthy of the attention of readers in North America and the English-speaking world,” reported a biographer on NYU Today. In the novel, Lavagnino relates the story of several generations of the Canterno family, an Italian family whose roots and religious connections extend deeply into history. The story is narrated by the family’s youngest member, Adriana, who tells about her mother, Marta, and her grandfather, a bookish and studious man who worked as a professor of ancient languages in Alexandria. Adriana also tells the story of her father, Enrico, who was shocked along with the rest of the family when Marta had their marriage annulled shortly after Adriana’s birth. Thereafter, she married Enrico’s good friend, Arturo, in an act that was scandalous for its time. Soon, Adriana finds herself in conflict with the two most important men in her life: the charming Arturo and her quieter and more reflective father, Enrico. With the approaching German occupation, however, Adriana finds her choices limited by the upheaval around her. Lavagnino “successfully evokes the sights, smells, and sounds of her characters’ surroundings,” commented Lisa Rohr-baugh in Library Journal, who also noted that protagonist Adriana’s “emotions are heartfelt and genuine.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, March 15, 2006, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review of The Librarians of Alexandria: A Tale of Two Sisters, p. 63.

New York Times, June 4, 2006, Alison McCulloch, review of The Librarians of Alexandria, p. 32.

ONLINE

NYU Today,http://www.nyu.edu/nyutoday/ (November5, 2007), “Zerilli-Marimó Prize Awarded toAlessandra Lavagnino.”

Steerforth Press Web site,http://www.steerforth.com/(November 5, 2007), biography of Alessandra Lavagnino.*