Susanna Tamaro

Susanna Tamaro (born 12 December 1957) is an Italian novelist and film director.

She is an author of novels, stories, magazine articles, and children's literature.

Susanna Tamaro was born and raised in Trieste in 1958.

The mother's family was Jewish; she is also a distant relative of the Italian writer Italo Svevo.

Her parents separated, and she has described her father as an alcoholic and her mother as "cold and cruel".

After her parents separated, she was raised by her maternal grandmother.

She also described herself as a "strange child", and being treated by neurologists and taking medications.

But then she read about Asperger's syndrome and received her diagnosis.

She received a scholarship to study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, an Italian school of cinema, where she obtained a diploma in direction in 1977 and began working with director Salvatore Samperi.

She worked as a writer and editor in the television industry for several years.

In 1978, she started writing her first short stories.

Her first novel Illmitz was completed in 1981 but rejected by all the publishing houses she approached.

In 1989, her novel La testa fra le nuvole (Head in Clouds) was published by Marsilio.

Her second novel Per voce sola (Solo Voice) (1991) won the International PEN prize and was translated into several languages.

Federico Fellini said of her second novel, "It has given me the joy of being moved without embarrassing me, as it happened to me when I read Oliver Twist or certain pages of America, by Kafka."

In 1991, she wrote a book for children Cuore di ciccia.

Her 1993 novel Va' dove ti porta il cuore (Follow your Heart) did not receive favorable reception from critics when it was first published, but it became a bestseller and sold 15 million copies by 2008.

Her novel Va' dove ti porta il cuore (Follow your Heart) was a bestseller, translated into 44 languages, and received the 1994 Premio Donna Citta di Roma.

The novel won the Premio Donna Citta di Roma award in 1994.

In 1996, the Italian director, Cristina Comencini, made a film of the same name based on the novel.

In 1997, she published the novel Anima Mundi, and was widely criticized for her portrayal of Father Walter in what she described as "a shameful campaign" of "insults, threats and slander".

In 1998, she published Dear Matildha - I can't wait for man to walk, a collection of articles she wrote for Famiglia Cristiana, an Italian magazine.

Her book Rispondimi (Answer Me) was described by Kirkus Reviews as "Holy abstractions brightened by dollops of sex and violence."

The book consists of three stories, featuring the daughter of a prostitute, the wife of a businessman, and a jealous husband.

A review by World Literature Today states, "The book's title comes from the closing passage of the first story, when Rosa, alone in the world, asks a stray white dog (a white dog appears in each story) if Someone guides us or if we are alone in the world. When the dog just looks at her with its tongue hanging out, she tells it to speak, to answer her: "Rispondimi"."

A review in Library Journal refers to the protagonists in each story and concludes, "Their bitterness at the world and inability to love or be loved is so off-putting that the reader is likely to stop caring long before they reach their moments of truth. Not recommended."

A review by Publishers Weekly states, "If Tamaro's view is dark, the care she takes with character development infuses her narratives with a clear and resonant moral vision."

In 2001, she wrote Raccontami.

By 2002, it was translated into 44 languages.

In 2002, she wrote Più fuoco, più vento; in 2003 Fuori.

In a 2002 interview, Tamaro described herself as an environmentalist and a vegetarian, and "a Christian more than a Catholic" due to the religious beliefs of her family, including her father's interest in Taoism and her Jewish mother.

In 2005, she directed the film Nel mio amore, based on a story from Answer Me, titled "Hell does not exist".

In 2006, she published Ascolta la mia voce (Listen to my voice), a sequel of Follow your Heart.

This novel was translated in twelve languages.

It is described as the "Italian book most sold in the 20th century"; as of 2008, about 25,000 copies had sold in the United States.

In 2008, she published Luisito- A Love Story.

It was eventually published in 2013.

In September 2018 she announced the release of her next book and anticipated that in it she tells of being affected by Asperger syndrome since the early years of life.

In 2021, a documentary about Tamaro titled Inedita was shown at the Rome Film Festival and then on television in Italy on channel Rai 5.

In the documentary, she discusses her life with Asperger's syndrome, her writing career, and her various interests, including bicycle repair, beekeeping, and the practice of martial arts.