Dacia Maraini was born on November 12, 1936, in Fiesole, Tuscany, the daughter of Fosco Maraini, a famous ethnologist, and Topazia Alliata, a painter. Pressured by political concerns under the Fascist regime, Fosco moved his family to Japan in 1937 where Maraini spent the first eight years of her life. When her father, a reader at the University of Kyoto, refused to take the obligatory oath to the Italian Social Republic established at Salò, the entire Maraini family became civil internees in the concentration camps at Najoja and then at Khobe from 1943 to 1945. This harrowing experience of hunger and abjection informs Maraini’s later writings, where she speaks of her return to the family residence in Bagheria, Sicily (
Bagheria1993) in 1947.
Despite an illustrious lineage, Maraini’s
1940 words
Citation: Lazzaro-Weis, Carol. "Dacia Maraini". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 December 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12686, accessed 25 November 2024.]
