Giorgio van Straten

Giorgio van Straten
Giorgio van Straten
Born	1955; Florence, Italy
Occupation	Novelist, librettist, playwright, editor, translator, critic, manager
Genre	fiction
Notable works	Il mio nome a memoria; (My Name, A Living Memory)
Notable awards	Grand Official Order of Merit of the Republic, Viareggio Prize, Zerilli-Marimò Prize for Italian Fiction
Relatives	Louis Fles, Barthold Fles; George Fles, Michael Fles; Bart Berman, Helen Berman, Thijs Berman

Giorgio van Straten (born 1955) is an Italian writer and manager of arts organizations. His first novel Generazione was published in 1987. In 2000 he won four literary prizes for Il mio nome a memoria, published in English as My Name, A Living Memory (2003), the story of his Jewish-Dutch family from 1811 to our days. That same year he was awarded the Grand Official Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.^[1]

Writing career[edit]

Van Straten translated from English into Italian The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Giunti, 1992), The Call of the Wild by Jack London (Giunti, 1994), The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Giunti, 1995) and The Pavilion on the dunes of Robert Louis Stevenson (The Unit, 1997). He is one of the directors of the Italian literary magazine Nuovi Argomenti.

For musical theatre he wrote Tre voci for voice, string orchestra, percussion and tape, music by Giorgio Battistelli, commissioned by the Sagra Musicale Umbra (First performance: Assisi, 1996); Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs), from the novel by Ernst Jünger, music by Giorgio Battistelli (First performance: National Theatre, Mannheim, 2002); Open Air, music of Andrea Molino, commissioned by the Società Aquilana dei Concerti (First performance: L'Aquila, 2012); Here there is no why, multimedia music theatre project by Andrea Molino (first performance at the Teatro Comunale, Bologna, 2014).

Books written[edit]

Generazione (1987)
Hai sbagliato foresta (1989)
Ritmi per il nostro ballo (1992)
Corruzione (1995)^[2]
Il mio nome a memoria (2000) English translation "My name a living memory" ^[3]^[4]
L'impegno spaesato (2002)
La verità non serve a niente (2008)
Storia d'amore in tempo di guerra (2014)
Storie di libri perduti (2016) English translation "In search of lost books" (Pushkin Press, 2017)
Una disperata vitalità (2022)

Management career[edit]

From 1985 to 2002 van Straten was the chairman of the Orchestra della Toscana. From 1997 to 2002 he was on the board of directors of the Biennale di Venezia and from 1998 to 2002 he also served as president of AGIS, the Italian Association for the Performing Arts.

From 2002 to 2005, Van Straten was the general director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. From 2005 to 2008 he managed Palazzo delle Esposizioni e Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. From 2009 to 2012 he was on the board of directors of the RAI. From 2015 to 2019 he was the director of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York.

Since 2020 he is the President of FAF Toscana – Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia.

Honours and awards[edit]

Il Ceppo Prize (1989)
Castiglioncello Prize (1995)
Grand Official Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2000)
Adei-Wizo Prize (2000)
Procida-Isola di Arturo-Elsa Morante Prize (2000)
Viareggio Prize (2000)
Zerilli-Marimò Prize for Italian Fiction (2000)^[5]
Giacomo Matteotti Prize (2015)

References[edit]

^ Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana – Van Straten Sig. Giorgio. Retrieved 2008-08-28.
^ "Currizione." The Economist 1996-05-18. Partially retrieved 2008-10-07, via HighBeam.
^ Margolin E: "My Name, A Living Memory." Forward 31 October 2003. Partially retrieved 2008-10-07.
^ Ragusa, Olga (22 September 2000). "Giorgio van Straten: Il mio nome a memoria". World Literature Today. doi:10.2307/40156244. JSTOR 40156244. Retrieved 5 November 2023 – via TheFreeLibrary.
^ "NYU's Zerilli-Marimo Prize for Italian Fiction Awarded to Giorgio Van Straten for Il Mio Nome a Memoria." The Italian Voice 26 October 2000. Partially retrieved 2008-10-07.

External links[edit]

Giorgio van Straten at Festivalleteratura
[1] Giorgio van Straten, in Andrea Kerbaker, Belfagor (Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki ), Vol. 63, No. 4 (31 luglio 2008), pp. 431–446

[1] Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana – Van Straten Sig. Giorgio. Retrieved 2008-08-28.

[2] "Currizione." The Economist 1996-05-18. Partially retrieved 2008-10-07, via HighBeam.

[3] Margolin E: "My Name, A Living Memory." Forward 31 October 2003. Partially retrieved 2008-10-07.

[4] Ragusa, Olga (22 September 2000). "Giorgio van Straten: Il mio nome a memoria". World Literature Today. doi:10.2307/40156244. JSTOR 40156244. Retrieved 5 November 2023 – via TheFreeLibrary.

[5] "NYU's Zerilli-Marimo Prize for Italian Fiction Awarded to Giorgio Van Straten for Il Mio Nome a Memoria." The Italian Voice 26 October 2000. Partially retrieved 2008-10-07.

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v t e Recipients of the Viareggio Prize
1930s	Anselmo Bucci – Lorenzo Viani (1930) Corrado Tumiati (1931) Antonino Foschini (1932) Achille Campanile (1933) Raffaele Calzini (1934) Mario Massa – Stefano Pirandello (1935) Riccardo Bacchelli (1936) Guelfo Civinini (1937) Vittorio Giovanni Rossi – Enrico Pea (1938) Arnaldo Frateili – Orio Vergani – Maria Bellonci (1939)
1940s	Silvio Micheli – Umberto Saba (1946) • Antonio Gramsci (1947) • Aldo Palazzeschi – Elsa Morante – Sibilla Aleramo (1948) • Arturo Carlo Jemolo – Renata Viganò (1949)
1950s	Francesco Jovine – Carlo Bernari (1950) • Domenico Rea (1951) • Tommaso Fiore (1952) • Carlo Emilio Gadda (1953) • Rocco Scotellaro (1954) • Vasco Pratolini (1955) • Carlo Levi – Gianna Manzini (1956) • Italo Calvino – Pier Paolo Pasolini (1957) • Ernesto de Martino (1958) • Marino Moretti (1959)
1960s	Giovanni Battista Angioletti (1960) • Alberto Moravia (1961) • Giorgio Bassani (1962) • Antonio Delfini – Sergio Solmi (1963) • Giuseppe Berto (1964) • Goffredo Parise - Angelo Maria Ripellino (1965) • Ottiero Ottieri – Alfonso Gatto (1966) • Raffaello Brignetti (1967) • Libero Bigiaretti (1968) • Fulvio Tomizza (1969)
1970s	Nello Saito (1970) • Ugo Attardi (1971) • Romano Bilenchi (1972) • Achille Campanile (1973) • Clotilde Marghieri (1974) • Paolo Volponi (1975) • Mario Tobino – Dario Bellezza – Sergio Solmi (1976) • Davide Lajolo (1977) • Antonio Altomonte – Mario Luzi (1978) • Giorgio Manganelli (1979)
1980s	Stefano Terra (1980) • Enzo Siciliano (1981) • Primo Levi (1982) • Giuliana Morandini (1983) • Gina Lagorio – Bruno Gentili (1984) • Manlio Cancogni (1985) • Marisa Volpi (1986) • Mario Spinella (1987) • Rosetta Loy (1988) • Salvatore Mannuzzu (1989)
1990s	Luisa Adorno – Cesare Viviani – Maurizio Calvesi (1990) • Antonio Debenedetti (1991) • Luigi Malerba (1992) • Alessandro Baricco (1993) • Antonio Tabucchi (1994) • Maurizio Maggiani – Elio Pagliarani (1995) • Ermanno Rea – Alda Merini (1996) • Claudio Piersanti – Franca Grisoni – Corrado Stajano (1997) • Giorgio Pressburger – Michele Sovente – Carlo Ginzburg (1998) • Ernesto Franco (1999)
2000s	Giorgio van Straten – Sandro Veronesi (2000) • Niccolò Ammaniti – Michele Ranchetti – Giorgio Pestelli (2001) • Fleur Jaeggy – Jolanda Insana – Alfonso Berardinelli (2002) • Giuseppe Montesano (2003) • Edoardo Albinati – Andrea Tagliapietra – Livia Livi (2004) • Raffaele La Capria – Alberto Arbasino – Milo de Angelis (2005) • Gianni Celati – Giovanni Agosti – Giuseppe Conte – Roberto Saviano (2006) • Filippo Tuena – Paolo Mauri – Silvia Bre – Simona Baldanzi – Paolo Colagrande – Paolo Fallai (2007) • Francesca Sanvitale – Miguel Gotor – Eugenio De Signoribus (2008) • Edith Bruck – Adriano Prosperi – Ennio Cavalli (2009)
2010s	Nicola Lagioia – Michele Emmer – Pierluigi Cappello (2010) • Alessandro Mari – Mario Lavagetto – Gian Mario Villalta (2011) • Nicola Gardini – Franco Lo Piparo – Antonella Anedda (2012) • Paolo Di Stefano – Giulio Guidorizzi – Enrico Testa (2013) • Francesco Pecoraro – Alessandro Fo – Luciano Mecacci (2014) • Antonio Scurati – Massimo Bucciantini – Franco Buffoni (2015) • Franco Cordelli – Bruno Pischedda – Sonia Gentili (2016) • Gianfranco Calligarich – Giuseppe Montesano – Stefano Carrai (2017) • Fabio Genovesi – Giuseppe Lupo (2018) • Emanuele Trevi – Renato Minore – Saverio Ricci (2019)
2020s	Paolo Di Paolo – Luciano Cecchinel – Giulio Ferroni (2020) • Edith Bruck - Flavio Santi - Walter Siti (2021) • Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli – Pietro Castellitto – Claudio Damiani – Wlodek Goldkorn – Agnese Pini – Veronica Raimo – Silvia Ronchey (2022)

v t e Recipients of the Zerilli-Marimò Prize for literature
1990s	Gianni Celati (1998) • Marcello Fois (1999)
2000s	Giorgio van Straten (2000) • Roberto Pazzi (2001) • Alessandra Lavagnino (2002) • Silvia Bonucci (2003) • Valeria Parrella (2006) • Milena Agus (2008)
2010s	Helena Janeczek (2010) • Nicola Gardini (2012)

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