{{Short description|Italian novelist, journalist and political activist}} '''Fausta Terni Cialente''' (29 November 1898 – 11 March 1994) was an Italian novelist, journalist and political activist.<ref name=Buck>'Cialente, Fausta Terni', in Buck, Claire, ed., ''Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature'', 1992, p.422.</ref> She is a recipient of the Strega Prize.
==Early life== Cialente was born on 29 November 1898 in Cagliari, Sardinia. She was the second child of Alfredo Cialente, an army officer originally from the Abruzzo region in central Italy and Elsa Wieselberger who had trained as a soprano and came from a musical family in Trieste.<ref name=ruggiero>{{ cite web | last=Ruggiero | first=Nunzio | year=2017 | title=CIALENTE, Fausta | language=it | work=Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani | place=Rome | publisher=Treccani | url=http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/fausta-cialente_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/ | access-date=15 August 2018}}</ref> Her elder brother Renato (1897–1943) became an actor and appeared in many films. Fausta's early life was marked by upheaval as the family followed the movements of her father. In 1921 she married Enrico Terni (1876–1960), a banker from a Jewish family of Italian origin who had settled in Alexandria, Egypt in the early nineteenth century. Enrico was a musician and a composer. Cialente's only daughter, Lionella (called Lili), was born in 1923. Although based in Alexandria the family would spend long holidays in Italy.<ref name=ruggiero/>
==Writings and later life== Cialente's first novel ''Natalia'', completed in 1927, treated the lesbian relationship of an unhappily married woman. It was published in Rome in 1930 and won the Dieci Savi Prize. When the initial print run of 3000 copies had been sold, her publisher wanted to print more copies but the censors in the Fascist regime asked for two sections of the book to be revised. Cialente refused and the book was not reprinted but in 1932 a French translation was published in France. In 1930 her short story "Marianna" was published in the literary magazine ''L'Italia Letteraria'' which was edited by Giambattista Angioletti. Her first novel with an Egyptian setting, ''Cortile a Cleopatra'', was completed in 1931. She tried unsuccessfully to persuade the prestigious publisher Mondadori to accept the work. It was serialized in ''L'Italia letteraria'' in 1935 and published as a book in 1936.<ref name=ruggiero/>
From 1940 she wrote antifascist pamphlets and made daily broadcasts from Radio Cairo against the Fascist regime in Italy. In 1947 she returned to Italy, living there until moving to England in 1984.<ref name=Minghelli>Giuliana Minghelli, 'Cialente, Fausta', in Jane Eldridge Miller, ed., ''Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing'', 2001, p. 66.</ref>
Many of Cialente's subsequent stories were set in Egypt. "The position of her female characters preoccupies Cialente throughout her work, not least in the semi-autobiographical ''Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger''",<ref name=Buck/> which won the Strega Prize.<ref name=Minghelli/>
She died in Pangbourne on 11 March 1994.<ref name=ruggiero />
==Works== * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1930 | title=Natalia: romanzo | language=it | place=Rome | publisher=Sapientia, Edizioni dei Dieci | oclc=955167272 }} *{{ cite journal | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1930 | title=Marianna | journal=L'Italia Letteraria | volume=6 }} Republished in ''Interno con figure'' (1976). * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1936 | title=Cortile a Cleopatra | language=it | place=Milan | publisher=A. Corticelli | oclc=13873407 }} * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1961 | title=Ballata levantina | series=Biblioteca di letteratura. I contemporanei, 25 | language=it | place=Milan | publisher=Feltrinelli | oclc=977921413 }} * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1966 | title=Un inverno freddissimo: romanzo | series=I narratori di Feltrinelli, 87 | language=it | place=Milan | publisher=Feltrinelli| oclc=1572178 }} * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1972 | title=Il vento sulla sabbia: romanzo | language=it | place=Milan | publisher=Mondadori | oclc=223416696 }} * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1976 | title=Interno con figure | language=it | place=Rome | publisher=Riuniti | oclc=251671916 }} A collection of short stories. Includes an autobiographical postface. * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1976 | title=Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger: romanzo | language=it | place=Milan | publisher=Mondadori | oclc=247228244 }}
===Translated into English=== * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=1962 | title=The Levantines |translator-last=Quigly |translator-first=Isabel | place=New York | publisher=Houghton Mifflin }} * {{ cite book | last=Cialente | first=Fausta | year=2026 | title=A Very Cold Winter |translator-last=Nelsen |translator-first=Julia | place=Berkeley | publisher=Transit Books | isbn=979-8893380231 }}
==References== {{reflist}}
{{Strega Prize}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cialente, Fausta}} Category:1898 births Category:1994 deaths Category:20th-century Italian writers Category:20th-century Italian women writers