Melania Gaia Mazzucco was born in Rome in 1966. Her father, who appears as a character in her 2003 novel
Vita(
Vita. A Novel, 2006), was a successful playwright. His father, whose adventures in America as a boy and then young man are recounted at length in that same novel, was an emigrant to the United States, where he stayed for some years before returning to settle in Rome.
Mazzucco attended secondary school in Rome, then graduated from the university there with a degree in Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature. She also took courses at Rome’s Center for Experimental Cinematography. Like her father, she wrote plays for the theater and the radio, especially at the beginning of her career. The first narrative work Mazzucco published was a short story about a Turkish immigrant named
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Citation: Klopp, Charles. "Melania Mazzucco". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 March 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13701, accessed 31 October 2024.]
