Her novel Va' dove ti porta il cuore (Follow Your Heart) was a worldwide bestseller, translated into 44 languages and awarded with the 1994 Premio Donna Città di Roma.

Susanna Tamaro was born in Trieste in 1957 to a family of Jewish origins on her mother's side; she is a distant relative of the Italian writer Italo Svevo.

[6] She received a scholarship to study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, an Italian school of cinema located in Rome, where she obtained a diploma in direction in 1977, beginning to work with director Salvatore Samperi.

Her 1993 novel Va' dove ti porta il cuore (Follow Your Heart) did not receive favorable reception from critics when it was first published,[10][11] but it became a bestseller[12][13][14][15] and sold 15 million copies by 2008.

"[25] A review by Publishers Weekly states, "If Tamaro's view is dark, the care she takes with character development infuses her narratives with a clear and resonant moral vision.

[28][29] In the documentary, she discusses her life with Asperger syndrome, her writing career, and her various interests, including bicycle repair, beekeeping, and the practice of martial arts.

[28] Tamaro described herself as a "strange child", being treated by neurologists and taking medications from an early age; later in her childhood she read about Asperger syndrome and was finally diagnosed with the disorder.

[6] In a 2002 interview, Tamaro called herself an environmentalist, a vegetarian, and "a Christian more than a Catholic" due to the religious beliefs of her family, including her father's interest in Taoism and her mother's Jewish heritage.