Sandro Veronesi

Sandro Veronesi is an Italian novelist born in 1959 in Prato, Tuscany. He is one of the most acclaimed Italian novelists of his generation and the only writer to have won the Premio Strega twice — in 2006 for Caos calmo (Quiet Chaos) and in 2020 for Il colibrì. He is also the author of essays and cultural commentary and has been an active presence in Italian public life. Veronesi's fiction is known for its emotional intelligence, its attentiveness to the complexity of contemporary Italian life, and its willingness to engage with grief, loss, and the passage of time. Caos calmo, his 2006 Strega winner, was adapted into a film starring Nanni Moretti. Il colibrì (The Hummingbird), his 2020 Premio Strega winner, follows Marco Carrera, a middle-aged ophthalmologist whose life has been shaped by a series of losses — his sister, his marriage, his daughter. The novel moves across different time periods with formal precision, drawing on philosophy and medicine to illuminate how a person survives grief. Il colibrì was translated into English by Elena Pala and published internationally to wide acclaim, adapted into a film by director Francesca Archibugi. Veronesi is regarded as one of the great Italian novelists of his generation.