DI NATALE, Silvia 1951-

PERSONAL:

Born 1951, in Genoa, Italy; married; children: one son. Education: Studied in Milan, Italy, and Monaco.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Germany.

CAREER:

Teacher and ethnosociologist in Germany, 1973—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Kuraj has received several literary awards.

WRITINGS:

Die andalusischen Landarbeiter: Geschichte, Lebenswelt, Handlungsstrategien, Leske & Budrich (Opladen, Germany), 1994.

Kuraj (novel), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 2000, translated by Carol O'Sullivan and Martin Thom under the same title, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

Il giardino del luppolo (novel; title means "The Hop Garden"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 2004.

L'ombra del cerro (novel; title means "Shadow of the Turkey Oak"), Feltrinelli (Milan, Italy), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Trained as an ethnosociologist, Silvia Di Natale interviewed scholars of Asian culture, war prison survivors, and World War II veterans as background research before writing her acclaimed novel Kuraj. An epic coming-of-age story, the novel follows the life of Kaja from childhood to middle age. She is a descendant of Genghis Khan and was born in Mongolia, where she and her family find themselves oppressed by Stalinist Russia. When World War II starts, her father, Ul'an, enlists with the Germans to exact his revenge against the Soviets. Forming a close friendship with a philosophical German soldier, he ends up on the Russian front, where he and his friend are captured but then escape. They make their way back to the steppes, where Ul'an perishes. His last request to his comrade is that he adopt his daughter. Kaja thus finds herself a kind of tumbleweed—which is the translation of the title—blowing into a culture she does not comprehend. A complete outsider when she arrives in postwar Germany to live with her adoptive parents, Kaja spends many years struggling to adjust. Only as she approaches middle age does she truly come to appreciate her new parents and herself.

Reviewers of Kuraj found it to be a slow going, though ultimately rewarding read. Comparing some of the writing to the accomplished works of Boris Pasternak, a Kirkus Reviews contributor described the novel as being "glacially paced" but "full of good moments." Donald Morrison, writing in the European edition of Time International, found occasional flaws, such as awkward dialogue and passages that are so detailed with facts that they read like an "ethnosociological monograph." However, he emphasized: "Such false notes are rare. Di Natale's account of the fighting at Stalingrad is thrilling, her descriptions of postwar German privations heartbreaking, her imagery cunning." In her Library Journal assessment, Andrea Kempf concluded that Kuraj is a "fascinating novel about immigration, dislocation, and, finally, self-acceptance."

Di Natale has continued to publish novels since Kuraj, but they remain available only in their original Italian. Both Il giardino del luppolo and L'ombra del cerro center around the war in Europe, however, just as Kuraj does.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2005, review of Kuraj, p. 1289.

Library Journal, December 1, 2005, Andrea Kempf, review of Kuraj, p. 111.

Publishers Weekly, December 19, 2005, review of Kuraj, p. 40.

Time International, October 10, 2005, Donald Morrison, "Gone with the Wind: In Kuraj, Silvia Di Natale Tells the Moving Tale of a Kyrgyz Nomad Looking for Roots in an Alien Culture," p. 105.*