Maike Albath
Germany
Born in Braunschweig in 1966, Maike Albath is a German literary critic, author, and journalist. She spent several years in Italy while studying German and Romance literatures and wrote her dissertation on the poet Andrea Zanzotto. She currently lives in Berlin. She is one of the most distinguished experts on contemporary Italian culture. Since 1993, she has worked at Deutschlandfunk and her literary criticism appears in major German newspapers. Along with her many broadcasts about literary Italy, she has published several books on Italian cultural and intellectual history.
In Der Geist von Turin (The Spirit of Turin), Make Albath describes the creation of the Einaudi publishing house and the rise of young intellectuals like Natalia Ginzburg, Cesare Pavese, and Italo Calvino. This avant-garde wanted to change their country through books. Albath’s portrait of Turin, a city barely recognized culturally, enchants with its variety and presents a lively account of the difficult defeat of Italian Fascism. Rom, Träume (Rome, Dreams) leads us into the 1950s and 60s, when Federico Fellini and others in Cinecittà were shooting their famous films: the time of La Dolce Vita. Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carlo Emilio Gadda, and Elsa Morante engaged in political and cultural events with their polarizing voices. In Trauer und Licht (Grief and Light), Maike Albath describes Sicily, that magical island, along with its literature and seething political present. Maike Albath’s books contain successful mixtures of literary and cultural history, collections of entertaining anecdotes, and sparkling descriptions of the spirit of these Italian cities and places.
Der Geist von Turin. Pavese, Ginzburg, Einaudi und die Wiedergeburt Italiens nach 1943. Berenberg 2010
Rom, Träume. Moravia, Pasolini, Gadda und die Zeit der Dolce Vita. Berenberg 2013
Italo Svevo. Deutscher Kunstverlag 2015
Trauer und Licht. Lampedusa, Sciascia, Camilleri und die Literatur Siziliens. Berenberg 2019
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