Capriolo, Paola 1962-

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CAPRIOLO, Paola 1962-

PERSONAL: Born 1962, in Milan, Italy.

ADDRESSES: Home—Milan, Italy. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Bompiani, Libreria Ambrosiana, 1, via Santo Clemente, 20122 Milan, Italy.

CAREER: Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS: G. Berto prize, 1988, for La grande Eulalia; Rapallo prize, 1991, for Il nocchiero.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS, EXCEPT AS NOTED

La grande Eulalia (short stories), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1988, second edition, 1990.

Il nocchiero, Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 1989.

Il doppio regno (title means "The Double Kingdom"), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1991, second edition, 1995.

La ragazza dala stella d'oro e altri racconti (short stories), illustrated by Gabriele Kutzke, Einaudi (Milan, Italy), 1991.

Vissi d'amore, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1992, translated by Liz Heron as Floria Tosca, Serpent's Tail (New York, NY), 1997.

La spettatrice, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1995, translated by Liz Heron as The Woman Watching, Serpent's Tail (New York, NY), 1999.

L'assoluto artificiale: Nichilism e mondo dell'espressione nell'opera saggistica di Gottfried Benn (nonfiction), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1996.

Un uomo di carattere, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1996, translated as A Man of Character, Serpent's Tail (London, England), 2000.

Con i miei mille occhi (includes CD-ROM), Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1997.

Barbara, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1998.

Il sogno dell'agnello, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1999.

Una di loro, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 2001.

Contributor to periodicals, including Conjunctions and Review of Contemporary Fiction, and to short-story collection Il premio Berto: 1988-1993, edited by Pasquale Russo, Monteleone, 1994. Also translator of works into Italian by Thomas Mann.

SIDELIGHTS: Writing in World Literature Today, Rocco Capozzi noted of Paola Capriolo that "of all the new writers who have emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in Italy, [she] stands unquestionably at the top of the list." Capozzi went on to state that "with each new novel [Capriolo] has shown great narrative skills, the ability to construct suspenseful stories, and a talent for unusual and colorful descriptions and original settings." In a dozen works, which include novels, short story collections, and literary criticism, Capriolo has established herself firmly in the European literary scene; and with several of her novels translated into English, her reputation is also growing in England and the United States.

Capriolo's 1995 novel, La spettatrice, was translated in 1998 as The Woman Watching, a "witty, psychologically astute gothic tale," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, that "chronicles the ruin of two young actors in a provincial Italian theater troupe at the beginning of the century." The same reviewer went on to note that the book is both a "complex reworking of the Narcissus myth" as well as an "allegory of the fate of the theater under modernism." The story focuses on the actor Vulpius who becomes obsessed with a woman watching his performance in a play about the life of Casanova. Vulpius thereafter uses his long neglected lover Dora as his stand in, so that he might have the same view of himself that the anonymous and mysterious woman does. For Susann Cokal, writing in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, "the real power of [the novel] lies in Capriolo's tracing of the psychological effects of the ghost-muse woman's manifestation has on these two lives." Capozzi, writing in World Literature Today, commented that readers "have been treated to [Capriolo's] suspenseful stories, elegant style, unusual love relationships, solitary characters, rich symbolism, and metanarrative structures." Such readers will not be disappointed with The Woman Watching.

Capozzi also recommended the 2001 novel Una di loro, with its similarities to Thomas Mann, especially to his Death in Venice and the narrator Aschenbach's fixation on the young Tadzio. In Capriolo's novel, it is the unnamed, middle-aged critic narrator who becomes obsessed with Claudia in this novel of "self-awareness and metamorphosis," as Capozzi wrote.

Capriolo is also the author of Un uomo di carattere, translated into English as A Man of Character. This is the story of Erasmo Stiler, an engineer who inherits a rundown villa and, in the process of trying to create a private version of Versailles there, destroys himself. A cautionary tale of man's desire to tame chaos, the novel deals with large ideas, as do all the works of Capriolo. In this case she plumbs the relationship between art and nature, and investigates the importance of living one's life as a moral project. A further title translated into English is Vissi d'amore, published as Floria Tosca, "an exquisite melodrama which uses Puccini's Tosca as its palimpsest," according to Capozzi.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, August 24, 1998, review of The Woman Watching, p. 47.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall, 1998, Susann Cokal, review of The Woman Watching, p. 255.

World Literature Today, spring, 1999, Rocco Capozzi, review of The Woman Watching, p. 313; winter, 2002, Rocco Capozzi, review of Una di loro, p. 201.