Alberto Bevilacqua

Who was Alberto Bevilacqua?

Alberto Bevilacqua was an Italian writer and filmmaker. Leonardo Sciascia, an Italian writer and politician, read Bevilacqua's first collection of stories, The Dust on the Grass, was impressed and published it. Mario Colombi Guidotti, responsible for the literary supplement of the Journal of Parma, began to publish his stories in the early 1950s.

Friendship Lost, his first book of poems, was published in 1961. Caliph, published in 1964, was his break-through novel. The protagonist, Irene Corsini, imbued with his own sweet and energetic temperament, is one of the strongest female characters in Italian literature. His novel This Kind of Love won the Campiello Prize in 1966. In both This Kind of Love and Caliph, Bevilacqua oversaw the adaptations and productions of the film versions. This Kind of Love won Best Film at Cannes.

Bevilacqua was also a poet. His writings have been translated throughout Europe, the United States, Brazil, China and Japan. In 2010, his seven "stories" as he likes to call them, are included in the Novels volume of the prestigious series "I Meridiani.”

Bevilacqua directed seven films between 1970 and 1999.