Alessandro Barbero is an Italian historian, novelist and essayist. Barbero was born in Turin. He attended the University of Turin, where he studied literature and Medieval history. He won the 1996 Strega Prize, Italy's most distinguished literary award, for Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle gentiluomo. His second novel, Romanzo russo. Fiutando i futuri supplizi, has been translated into English as The Anonymous Novel. Sensing the Future Torments. Its critical success in Italy has been repeated in Britain: Franco Cardini wrote in Il Giornale, "Barbero uses the diabolic skills of an erudite and professional narrator to seek out massacres of the distant and recent past. The Anonymous Novel concerns the past-that-never-passes and the future that in 1988 was impending and has now arrived". Allan Massie wrote in The Scotsman, ""If you have any feeling for Russia or for the art of the novel, then read this one. 

April 30th, 1959 in Turin (Age 64)