Vinci, Simona 1970-

PERSONAL:

Born March 6, 1970, in Milan, Italy.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Budrio, Italy.

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Elsa Morente Prize for Best First Novel, for What We Don't Know about Children.

WRITINGS:

Dei bambini non si sa niente (novel), Einaudi (Torino, Italy), 1997, translation by Minna Proctor published as What We Don't Know about Children, Knopf (New York, NY), 2000.

In tutti i sensi come l'amore, Einaudi (Torino, Italy), 1999.

Brother and Sister, Einaudi (Torino, Italy), 2003.

Come prima delle madri, Einaudi (Torino, Italy), 2003.

Ragazze che dovresti conoscere: The Sex Anthology, Einaudi (Torino, Italy), 2004.

Stanza 411, Einaudi (Torino, Italy), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Italian writer Simona Vinci's first novel, Dei bambini non si sa niente, translated as What We Don't Know about Children, won the Elsa Morente Prize in Italy for best first novel. The story takes place during the summer in Bologna, and follows a group of teens and preteens as they begin to discover their sexuality, starting off as the mere fumblings of the curious in an abandoned shed on the outskirts of their town. However, as the older teens grow more advanced in their experiments, and outside influences such as pornography are introduced, the innocence of the group's behavior morphs into something more serious. A contributor for Publishers Weekly called the book "a perversely compulsive read," that "will leave readers bristling more at the brute shock of the tale than at its indictment of a perverse society."

In Brother and Sister, Vinci tells the story of a single frightening night for two children who have just lost their mother. In a review for World Literature Today, Patricia N. Gathercole wrote: "The real and the unreal are combined to create a different type of story, a kind of fairy tale." Vinci's follow up work, Come prima delle madri, takes an even darker turn, examining the relationship between victim and victimizer. Peter Cocozzella, also writing for World Literature Today, observed: "Simona Vinci asserts, cogently, the mastery of her craft. Such a talented author deserves, to be sure, a wide readership as well as the attention of the seasoned scholar."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, May 8, 2000, review of What We Don't Know about Children, p. 206.

World Literature Today, September-December, 2004, Peter Cocozzella, review of Come prima delle madri, p. 132; May-August, 2005, Patricia N. Gathercole, review of Brother and Sister, p. 101.