The Modern Novel

Biography

Paolo Volponi was born in Urbino in 1924. His father had a small business that baked terra cotta. At the end of the war, he had a brief spell in the Italian resistance. After the war, he studied law and took a degree from Urbino University. The following year, he published his first collection of poetry. He then went to work for Olivetti, joining a team looking at social conditions in the South of Italy. He later moved to Ivrea, where he work in human resources. Adriano Olivetti was, at this time, trying to humanise his company, by hiring more idealistic people. While working for Olivetti, he continued to publish both prose and poetry. In 1971, he went to work for Fiat but had to leave when his left-wing views were deemed unacceptable. He joined the Communist party and later became a senator in the Italian parliament for the communists. He remained a communist till his death in 1994. Many of his works are based on his experiences in Olivetti and Fiat, putting forward the view that industrial society should be more democratic and humanistic. His books, though having a post-modern flavour, are clearly more in the realist tradition but they are also different from those of many of his contemporaries and deserve to be better known. He died in 1994.

Other links

Obituary
Paolo Volponi (in Italian)
Paolo Volponi (in Italian)
Paolo Volponi (in Italian)
Biografia Paolo Volponi (in Italian)
Paolo Volponi: Il Coraggio della Diversità (in Italian)
Interview (in Italian)