Antonio Pennacchi, Strega prize with Canale Mussolini, died

The writer Antonio Pennacchi, winner of the 2010 Strega Prize with Canale Mussolini, died this evening in his home in Latina at the age of 71.

The Mondadori publishing house confirms this. 

Born in Latina in 1950, worker at Alcatel Cavi, Pennacchi devoted himself to politics first in the ranks of the MSI and then in those of the Italian Marxist-Leninist Party. Between the 70s and 80s he joined the PSI, the CGIL and then the UIL. In 1983, during a period of layoffs, he graduated in Literature and Philosophy to then embrace a career as a writer. The debut in 1995 with Mammut, followed by da Palude. Story of love, ghosts and transplants. In 2003 he published Il Beam Communist. Vita scriteriata by Accio Benassi, an autobiographical novel from which the film My brother is an only child was based in 2007, directed by Daniele Luchetti. In 2010 Canale Mussolini was released, a finalist for the Campiello Prize and winner of the Strega. He then signed Storia di Karel (2013), Camerata Neandertal. Books,ghosts and various funerals (2014), Canale Mussolini. Part Two (2015), Il delitto di Agora (2018), a reinterpretation of the thriller A Red Cloud published in 1998, and La strada del mare (2020).