Authors

Italian · 1861–1927

Federico De Roberto

Federico De Roberto was a Sicilian novelist whose masterwork I Viceré (The Viceroys, 1894) — a portrait of a Sicilian aristocratic family's adaptation to the Risorgimento — is one of the great political novels of Italian literature. His naturalism combined Zola's sociological ambition with Verga's Sicilian specificity. He was a close friend of Giovanni Verga and an important figure in the Sicilian verismo movement, though his novel was largely overlooked in his lifetime and only recognized as a masterpiece after World War Two.