DELEDDA, GRAZIA

(1871–1937)

   The only Italian woman writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (and one of the limited group of women ever to win the world’s most prestigious literary award), Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro (Sardinia) in 1871, though from 1898 onward she lived in Rome. A self-taught writer, Deledda’s many novels depict Sardinian characters in psychological and moral dramas of great intensity. During her lifetime, she was widely compared to Feodor Dostoyevsky, and although this comparison now seems overblown, there is no doubt that her best works—Elias Portolu (1903), Cenere (Ashes, 1904), and Canne al vento (Reeds in the Wind, 1913)—are powerful works of art that deserve renewed critical attention. Deledda’s last work was an autobiography, Cosima, which was published after her death in 1937.