Franco Lucentini

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Franco Lucentini (Rome, 1920 - Turin, 2002) was an Italian writer, journalist, translator and editor of anthologies.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Rome on 24 December 1920 to Emma Marzi and Venanzio Lucentini, a miller from Marche and later the owner of a bakery in Rome.

While studying Philosophy at the University of Rome, Lucentini was one of the organizers of a practical joke against the fascist regime: on 5 May 1941 he and a friend distributed among other students paper streamers. When unrolled during a public meeting, they revealed writings such as "Down with the war!", "Down with Hitler!" and "Long live freedom!". Lucentini was arrested and spent two months in prison.

Lucentini graduated in February 1943. Called to arms in 1943, was refused the admission to the training to become an officer. After the Armistice, the Allied armed forces put to use his writing skills as a junior editor for the "United Nations News" press agency in Naples.

While in Paris, in 1952, he first met Carlo Fruttero, with whom a life-long literary collaboration began in 1958, when Lucentini moved to Turin, where both of them worked for Einaudi publishing house.

As a very successful and appreciated team, Fruttero & Lucentini wrote books and worked in publishing, directing book series and magazines (Il Mago, Urania), and editing fiction anthologies, for Einaudi publishing house and later for Mondadori.

Their first book was the poetry collection L'idraulico non verrà, in 1971. But the first largely successful work was the crime novel La donna della domenica (1972), set in Turin. The novel was made into the same title film by Luigi Comencini; the next novel, A che punto è la notte (1979), shared the same protagonist, il commissario Santamaria. In the following decades they wrote together several novels and non-fiction books, till "F&L" became a known and appreciated trademark. They also collaborated on many satyrical articles on Turin-based newspaper La Stampa.

Afflicted by a lung cancer, Lucentini took his life on 5 August 2002, throwing himself down the stairs of his flat's building in piazza Vittorio Veneto, 1, in Turin.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] alone

  • I compagni sconosciuti, Einaudi, 1951 (republished in 2006) - The gloomy tale of Franco, an Italian wandering in post-war Vienna
  • Notizie degli scavi, Feltrinelli, 1964 (republished by Einaudi in 2001) - A novella about "Professor", the feeble-minded factotum of a brothel in Rome

[edit] with Carlo Fruttero

  • Il secondo libro della fantascienza, Einaudi, 1961 - The first of several successful anthologies of science fiction short stories edited by F&L
  • L'idraulico non verrà, 1971 (republished by Nuovo Melangolo in 1993) - Poetry collection (literally, "The plumber will not come")
  • La donna della domenica, Mondadori, 1972 (translated into English by William Weaver as The Sunday Woman in 1973) - The first and most famous novel by F&L, and one of the first examples of Italian crime novels
  • La cosa in sé, Einaudi, 1982 - Play (lit., "The thing in itself")
  • Il Palio delle contrade morte, Mondadori, 1983 - (lit., "The Palio of the dead quarters")
  • A che punto è la notte, Mondadori, 1985 - Crime novel (lit., "What of the night", as in the Bible book of Isaiah, 22:11)
  • La prevalenza del cretino, Mondadori, 1985 - A collection of columns form the newspaper La Stampa, about all foorms of stupidity (lit., "The supremacy of the stupid")
  • La verità sul caso D, Einaudi, 1989 - A completion and elaboration on Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood (lit., "The truth on the D case")
  • L'amante senza fissa dimora, Mondadori, 1990 - A successful Italian woman meets a mysterious man in romantic Venice: an apparently standard love story with a twist (lit., "The lover of no fixed abode")
  • Storie americane di guerra, Einaudi, 1991 - Anthology of "American war stories"
  • Enigma in luogo di mare, Mondadori, 1991 - (lit., "Riddle in a sea town")
  • Il ritorno del cretino, Mondadori, 1992 - More columns from "La Stampa" (lit., "The comeback of the stupid")
  • Breve storia delle vacanze, Mondadori, 1994 - (lit., "Short history of vacations")
  • La morte di Cicerone, Nuovo Melangolo, 1995 - (lit., "Cicero's death")
  • Il significato dell'esistenza, Tea, 1997 - (lit., "The meaning of existence")
  • Il nuovo libro dei nomi di battesimo, Mondadori, 1998 - A non-fiction handbook about how to choice a name for a son, with amusing informations and trivia on names' meaning and use
  • Il cretino in sintesi, Mondadori, 2002 - Still more columns from "La Stampa" (lit., "The stupid in synthesis")
  • Viaggio di nozze al Louvre, Allemandi, 2002 - (lit., "Honeymoon at Louvre")
  • I nottambuli, Avagliano, 2002 - (lit., "The nightwalkers")
  • I ferri del mestiere, Einaudi, 2003 - A collection of articles and short stories edited by Domenico Scarpa (lit., "The tools of the trade")

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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