La chiave a stella

The Strega Prize (Premio Strega) has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction by an Italian author and first published between 1 May of the previous year and 30 April. It is the most prestigious Italian literary prize. Winners have included Cesare Pavese (1950), Alberto Moravia (1952), Giorgio Bassani (1956), Dino Buzzati (1958), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1959), Natalia Ginzburg (1963), Tommaso Landolfi (1975), Primo Levi (1979), Umberto Eco (1981), Gesualdo Bufalino (1988) and Claudio Magris (1997).

History

In 1944 Maria and Goffredo Bellonci started to host a literary salon at their home in Rome. These Sunday gatherings of writers, artists and intellectuals grew to include many of the most notable figures of Italian cultural life. The group became known as the Amici della Domenica, or ‘Sunday Friends’. La chiave a stella. In 1947 the Belloncis, together with Guido Alberti, owner of the firm which produces the Strega liqueur, decided to inaugurate a prize for fiction, the winner being chosen by the Sunday friends.

The activities of the Bellonci circle and the institution of the prize were seen as marking a tentative return to ‘normality’ in Italian cultural life: a feature of the reconstruction which followed the years of Fascism, war, occupation and liberation. The first winner of the Strega, elected by the Sunday Friends, was Ennio Flaiano, for his first and only novel Tempo di uccidere, which is set in Africa during the First Italo-Abyssinian War. It has been translated into English as The Short Cut.

The selection process

Since the death of Maria Bellonci in 1986, the prize has been administered by the Fondazione Maria e Goffredo Bellonci.