Fausta Cialente

Fausta Terni Cialente (1898-1994) was an Italian novelist and journalist.^[1]

Life

Born in Cagliari, Fausta Cialente's early life was marked by upheaval as the family followed the movements of her father, an army officer. Marrying the composer Enrico Terni in 1921, she settled in Alexandria, Egypt until the end of World War II. From 1940 she wrote antifascist pamphlets and made daily broadcasts from Radio Cairo against the Fascist regime in Italy. In 1947 she returned to Italy, living there until moving to England in 1984.^[2]

Though her first novel Natalia won the Dieci Savi Prize, the book (treating the lesbian relationship of an unhappily married woman) was suppressed by the Fascists. Many of Cialente's subsequent stories were set in Egypt. "The position of her female characters precoccupies Cialente throughout her work, not least in the semi-autobiographical Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger",^[1] which won the Strega Prize.^[2]

Works

• Natalia [Natalie], 1929.
• Cortile a Cleopatra [Courtyard to Cleopatra], 1936.
• Ballata levantina, 1961. Translated by Isabel Quigly as The Levantines, 1963
• Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger: romanzo [The four Wieselberger Girls: a novel], 1962.
• Un inverno freddissimo [A Very Cold Winter], 1966

References

1. 'Cialente, Fausta Terni', in Buck, Claire, ed., Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature, 1992, p.422.
2. Giuliana Minghelli, 'Cialente, Fausta', in Jane Eldridge Miller, ed., Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing, 2001, p.66

External links

• Works by or about Fausta Cialente in libraries (WorldCat catalog)