ABSTRACT
Elio Vittorini was born in the Sicilian city of Syracuse on 23 July 1908, the son of a station-master. In one of his few autobiographical recollections, he spoke of a childhood passed in solitary railway stations, stranded in the malarial wasteland of the Sicilian countryside. Literature, however, was Elio Vittorini's main passion, and it was no accident that he chose as mentor a writer who combined literary and journalistic activity with daring political commitment. At the age of seventeen, Vittorini managed to start a correspondence with the flamboyant Curzio Suckert Malaparte, who was then living in Rome. Vittorini offered Malaparte his devotion and enthusiasm (he volunteered to distribute the journal in Syracuse) and also submitted various articles of political content. Vittorini also offered Malaparte some fictional pieces. The first one, an extract from the project of a novel, was 'Ritratto di Re Gianpiero', published in the June 1927 issue of L'Italia letteraria.
