Dante Arfelli

Dante Arfelli, born in 1921 in Bertinoro, Emilia Romagna, began to pursue his ambitions as a writer under the guidance of his mentor, Marino Moretti, and alongside his young colleagues Gino Montesanto, Enrico Panunzio and Michele Prisco. After gaining his first official recognition (e.g., the publication of the short story Approdo alla terra del loto in La Caravella in 1948), he tried to write a novel, and in the summer 1948 published I superflui (Rizzoli, 1949), winner of the Venice Prize in 1949 and soon a best-seller in the United States. 

Coldly received by Italian critics, I superflui was immediately translated and published in several European countries (including France, Germany, and England) and in the United States, where it was published in 1951 with the title The Unwanted by Charles Scribner's Sons, in the translation by Frances Frenaye. The novel was reprinted in 1953 by the New American Library as Signet Book 1984, and in 1958 a paperback edition was published by Berkley Books, with the title The Girl of the Roman Night (an obvious reference to Alberto Moravia's La romana, a novel that had achieved enormous success in the United States). In the US, The Unwanted reached an extraordinary print run: in late 1951, Hall Wheelock, editor of Charles Scribner's Sons informed Arfelli of «the agreement reached with The New American Library for a cheap edition of 600.000 initial copies to be launched in the fall of '52» (Ivan Simonini, 2008, p. 21). The novel was also reviewed by major figures in the literary scene of the time, such as Anthony West in the New Yorker and William Weaver in the New York Times, who, like most American reviewers, emphasized Arfelli's adherence to neorealism, a more problematic issue for recent Italian critics.

Arfelli's second novel, La Quinta Generazione (Rizzoli, 1951), was also released in Europe and the United States, translated by Adrienne Foulke and titled The Fifth Generation (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953). Both in Italy and in the United States, the novel was less successful than The Unwanted. Due to a neurotic disorder – Arfelli's creative vein was on the verge of exhaustion – the writer eventually locked himself in an emblematic silence. He died in 1995, after reappearing in bookstores with few sporadic Italian-only publications (Quando c'era la pineta, Il Girasole, 1975; Ahimè, povero me, Marsilio, 1993).