Vasco Pratolini

Vasco Pratolini, (b. Oct. 19, 1913, Florence, Italy—d. Jan.
12, 1991, Rome), Italian short-story writer and novelist,
known particularly for compassionate portraits of the
Florentine poor during the Fascist era. He is considered a
major figure in Italian Neorealism.
Pratolini was reared in
Florence, the setting of nearly all his fiction, in a poor
family. He held various jobs until his health failed. His
illness forced his confinement in a sanatorium from 1935 to
1937. He had no formal education but was an incessant
reader, and during his confinement he began to write.
Pratolini went to Rome,
where he met the novelist Elio Vittorini, who introduced him
into literary circles and became a close friend. Like
Vittorini, Pratolini rejected fascism; the Fascist
government shut down Pratolini’s literary magazine, Campo di
Marte, within nine months of its founding in 1939.
His first important novel,
Il quartiere (1944; The Naked Streets), offers a vivid,
exciting portrait of a gang of Florentine adolescents.
Cronaca familiare (1947; Two Brothers) is a tender story of
Pratolini’s dead brother. Cronache di poveri amanti (1947; A
Tale of Poor Lovers), which has been called one of the
finest works of Italian Neorealism, became an immediate
best-seller and won two international literary prizes. The
novel gives a panoramic view of the Florentine poor at the
time of the Fascist triumph in 1925–26. Un eroe del nostro
tempo (1949; A Hero of Today, or, A Hero of Our Time)
attacks fascism.
Between 1955 and 1966
Pratolini published three novels under the general title Una
storia italiana (“An Italian Story”), covering the period
from 1875 to 1945. The first, Metello (1955), considered the
finest of the three, follows its working-class hero through
the labour disputes after 1875 and climaxes with a
successful building masons’ strike in 1902. The second, Lo
scialo (1960; “The Waste”), depicts the lassitude of the
lower classes between 1902 and the mid-1920s preparatory to
the Fascist takeover. The final volume, Allegoria e
derisione (1966; “Allegory and Derision”), deals with the
triumph and fall of Fascism, focusing on the moral and
intellectual conflicts of the Florentine intelligentsia.