Livia Manera Sambuy

[1] A cultural reporter and critic since the 1980s,[2] Manera has been a staff writer for the Italian national newspaper, Corriere della Sera, and its literary supplement La Lettura, since 2000.

[8] “Facing the camera, without ever hearing the voiceof the Italian journalist, who managed the feat of extracting eight hours of interview from him, reduced to 53 minutes, the godfather of American literature looks back on his life and a literary career spanning more than half a century.

He is, for 90 minutes, marvelous company — expansive, funny, generous and candid.”[11] Manera's first book, Non Scrivere di Me (2015) is work of literary nonfiction that blends memoir with the profiles of eight North American writers.

For Livia Manera it should sound like a prohibition, but it is in fact an instigation to break down the barrier that divides human understanding and literary invention, it is a stimulus to activate the memory of self and the memory left by the many readings and key words that have opened the door to a territory where life and literature mingle (...) It is thus that the figures of Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Paula Fox, Judith Thurman, David Foster Wallace, Joseph Mitchell, Mavis Gallant, and James Purdy come to us, with a new transparency, but also, against the light, those of Raymond Carver, Mordecai Richler, and Karen Blixen.

According to a wartime letter received by a member of her family, Amrit Kaur, the Rani of Mandi, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940, charged with selling her jewelry to help Jews leave the country, and died while imprisoned.