JULY 21st
Biography
Erri De Luca Born was born in Naples in 1950. He is a writer, playwright, translator and poet. When he was 18 years old, he left Naples and got politically involved in the extra-parliamentary left movement until he was in his 30s. His political commitment came to an end in the autumn of 1980, with his involvement in the fight against the layoff of twenty thousand workers from FIAT Mirafiori in Turin.
Between 1976 and 1996 he worked as a laborer. Between 1983 and 1984, he participated as a volunteer in a program in Tanzania, aimed at supplying water to some local villages. During the war in former Yugoslavia, in the 90s, he worked as a truck driver for humanitarian convoys.
In the spring of 1999 he was in Belgrade, during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, siding with the local population.
His friendship with the Sarajevo poet Izet Sarajlic dates to that time, during the Bosnian war when he also became acquainted with Ante Zemljar, poet and partisan commander of the anti-nazi war.
His first novel, Non ora, non qui, was published in Italy in 1989. His books have been translated in more than 30 languages. He has self-learnt English, French, Swahili, Russian, Yiddish and old Hebrew and he also translated some parts of the Old Testament using the literal method.
He has been a screenwriter for the film industry, writing the short film Di là dal vetro, IlTurno di Notte lo Fanno le Stelle (awarded at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival in New York), the musical biography La Musica Provata and the documentary Alberi che camminano. He wrote and translated into Neapolitan Cocteau’s La voix humaine for the lead actress Sophia Loren.
For the YouTube channel The Decameron 2020, he wrote and collected, with Paola Pourrini, the voices of many writers and actors from all over the world, grappling with the isolation caused by the pandemic.
On stage, he has starred in Attraverso (Mario Brunello, Gabriele Mirabassi, Marco Paolini, Gianmaria Testa); Chisciotte e gli invincibili (Gabriele Mirabassi e Gianmaria Testa); In nome della madre (Sara Cianfriglia e Simone Gandolfo); In viaggio con Aurora (Aurora De Luca); Chisciottimisti (Gabriele Mirabassi e Gianmaria Testa); Solo andata with the Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino.
He practices rock climbing. His favorite mountains are the Dolomites. He lives in the countryside around Rome where he planted and continues to plant trees.
Guest of the 50th edition of the Giffoni Film Festival, Erri De Luca wanted to dedicate the "Giffoni 50" prize to the family of Giulio Regeni, the Italian PhD student from the University of Cambridge, who was kidnapped on January 25, 2016 and found lifeless on February 3, close to a prison of the Egyptian secret services.