He was born in Bologna but brought up in
Ferrara where most of his fiction is set. He got his degree in Italian
literature at the university of Bologna, but the antisemitic Fascist laws cut
him off from general Italian society and he taught at the Jewish school in
Ferrara and participated in anti-Fascist activities for which he was arrested
and only released after the fall of Mussolini. He then moved to Rome. He wrote
poems, stories and novels, many of them set in the Jewish community. His
best-known works are The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and The Gold-Rimmed
Spectacles
Bibliography:
BASSANI, Giorgio. Una citta di pianura: pubblicato nel 1940 con lo pseudonimo
Giacomo Marchi. [prefazione: Cesare Garboli; introduzione: Graziano Gruppioni].
Pp. 125. Sabbioncello San Pietro (Ferrara): 2 G, 2003
BASSANI, Giorgio. Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi, di Giorgio Bassani.
2. ed. accresciuta. Pp. 3 l., 9-61, [1] p., 1 l. Roma: Astrolabio, 1946
BASSANI, Giorgio. Five stories of Ferrara. (Translated from the Italian by
William Weaver). Pp. 203. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, [1971]BASSANI,
Giorgio. Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini. 16. ed. Pp. 295, ill. Torino: Einaudi,
c1962, 1972 printing.
BASSANI, Giorgio. The garden of the Finzi-Continis. [translated by Isabel Quigly].
Pp. 236. London: Quartet Books, 1974
BASSANI, Giorgio. Il romanzo di Ferrara. 1. ed. Pp. 815. [Milano]: A. Mondadori,
1974.
BASSANI, Giorgio. Opere. a cura e con un saggio di Roberto Cotroneo. 1. ed. I
meridiani. Pp. xciv, 1852. Milano: A. Mondadori, 1998.
Links:
Giorgio Bassani - Italia Libri (in Italian)
Homenaje a Giorgio Bassani - Fundación Memoria del Holocausto (in Spanish)
