Gianni Celati

The three books reveal a new direction in the author's style, more serious and visual after the amusing and explosive wordy manner of the previous ones.

West dedicated her Gianni Celati: The Craft of Everyday Storytelling to his writings (published by University of Toronto Press).

In 2006, he won the Viareggio Prize for his novel Vite di pascolanti[2] and made the third James K. Binder Lectureship in Literature at the University of California in San Diego on "Fellini on the Italian Male".

Celati has translated works by Jonathan Swift, William Gerhardie, Herman Melville, Stendhal, Louis Ferdinand Céline, Mark Twain, Roland Barthes, Jack London, Henri Michaux, Georges Perec, and others.

He also directed a few documentaries, such as Strada Provinciale delle Anime (1991), Il Mondo di Luigi Ghirri (1999, on the Italian photographer), Case Sparse (2003), and Diol Kadd (2010, shot in Senegal); while he starred in Mondonuovo (2003) by the director Davide Ferrario, a movie on Celati's childhood.