Claudio Magris (Trieste, 1939) is a novelist, storyteller, essayist, dramatist, and literary historian.
He is one of the most prominent contemporary Italian authors.
For decades Magris has worked as a professor of modern German literature at the University of Trieste. He has written a series of books on the history and culture of Central, Southern and South-eastern Europe.
Magris’ writings on Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, Italo Svevo, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Hermann Hesse, Henrik Ibsen and Jorhe Luis Borges are famous. He has been a columnist for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
His most important prose books: Inferences from a Sabre (1984), Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea (1986), A Different Sea (1991), Microcosms (1997), Sightlessly (2005), You Will, Surely, Understand (2006).
Drama: Stadelmann (1988).
The most important books of essays and literary-historical studies: The Habsburg Myth in Modern Austrian Literature (1963), Trieste: A Border Identity (co-authored with Angelo Ara, 1982), Utopia and Disillusionment (1999), An Unfinished Journey (2005), The Story Is Not Over Yet (2006).
Claudio Magris’ prose, essays and studies have been translated into all major languages.
He has received a number of literary awards and recognitions the most important among which are: the Strega Prize, the Erasmus Prize, Prince of Austria Award, the Austrian State Award for Literature, the Walter Hallstein Prize, European Communication Award of the Leipzig Book Fair Award, the Tomasi di Lampedusa Prize, the Würth Prize for European Literature, the Vilenica Award, the Jean Monet Prize, and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
Claudio Magris’ name has occurred in recent years as one of the major candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
He lives in Trieste.