Cassola, Carlo

Born Mar. 17, 1917, in Rome. Italian writer.

Cassola’s first collections of stories were published in 1941 and 1942. The resistance movement, to which he belonged, is the subject of his novel Fausto and Anna (1952). His most famous novellas are Old Comrades (1953; Russian translation, 1965), depicting the life and struggle of a group of Communist members of the underground during the years of fascism and the resistance, and The Felling of the Forest (published 1953; Russian translation, 1958), in which Cassola shows his hero at his work and in unity with nature. The novel Bubo’s Girl looks at the resistance in the light of postwar problems. Cassola moved away from sociopolitical themes to focus on the feelings of his characters in his more recent works (The Arid Heart, 1961; Memorable Times, 1966; and Fear and Sadness, 1970).