Vasco Pratolini was born in Florence in 1913, into a family of few resources. His mother died in 1918 and the boy had to go live with his grandparents since his father was at war.
At the age of twelve he moved to Via del Corno, a street that would become the main character in one of his most famous novels, Chronicles of Poor Lovers (1947). In his youth he worked as a street vendor, as a waiter and as a typographer. Almost self-taught, he entered the world of letters thanks to his relationship with Elio Vittorini, who got him a position in the Il Bargello newspaper. An avid reader, he took advantage of his confinement in a hospital (he suffered from tuberculosis) between 1935 and 1937 to compulsively read Dante, Alessandro Manzoni, Jack London, Charles Dickens, Mario Pratesi and Federigo Tozzi. In 1938 he founded, together with Alfonso Gatto, the Campo di Marte magazine, which was closed by the fascist government nine months later. In 1939 he moved to Rome, where he worked at the Ministry of Education. In 1941 he married and published his first book, The Green Tablecloth. In 1943 he participated in the Italian resistance against the German occupation under the identity of Rodolfo Casati, an experience he recounted in My Heart at Puente Milvio. After liberation, he settled in Milan, where he worked as a journalist at La Settimana. He also taught at the Istituto d’Arte. After the war he moved to Naples, where he developed an intense journalistic activity as a correspondent for the newspapers Milano Sera and Paese Sera. In 1951 he moved to Rome, where he was part of Italian cinematographic neorealism. He wrote more than twenty scripts. Among them, those of the films Rocco and his brothers (along with Suso Cecchi d’Amico), by Luchino Visconti, and Paisá, by Roberto Rossellini. In 1954 and 1961, director Valerio Zurlini filmed his novels Family Chronicle and The Girls of Sanfrediano. In 1964, he was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for Four Days in Naples by Nanni Loy. Mauro Bolognini filmed his novel Metello in 1970, with a script by Suso Cecchi d’Amico and music by Ennio Morricone. Among his most important works are: Family Chronicle (1947), Chronicles of Poor Lovers (1947), The Girls of Sanfrediano (1948) and Metello (1955), a novel for which he won the Viareggio Prize. Along with Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino, Elio Vittorini and Cesare Pavese, he was one of the initiators of Italian neorealism. Vasco Pratolini died in Rome in January 1991, at the age of seventy-seven.
