Giorgio van Straten was born in Florence in 1955. His first novel was Generazione (Garzanti, 1987). He has gone on to publish many more, including Il mio nome a memoria, which won the Premio Viareggio and was republished in 2020 by Francesco Brioschi Editore. His narrative non-fiction Storie di libri perduti (Laterza, 2016) has been published in many countries. He has translated books from English (including Kipling, London and Stevenson). He is an editor for the magazine “Nuovi Argomenti”, and was director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.