Paolo Cognetti

(Milan, 1978) A writer and documentary maker, he began his career as a fiction writer with short stories, for example Una cosa piccola che sta per esplodere (2007). After a long stay in New York, as a result of which he wrote two personal guides of the city (New York è una finestra senza tende, 2010, and Tutte le mie preghiere guardano verso ovest, 2014). Cognetti returned to Italy where he lived for extended periods in the Aosta Valley where he had spent his childhood holidays. His own experience of the mountains provides the background for his recent books Il ragazzo selvatico: quaderno di montagna (in Spanish, El muchacho silvestre, Minúscula, 2017, Catalan edition 2018) and The Eight Mountains (in Catalan, Les vuit muntanyes, Navona, 2018, and in Spanish, Las ocho montañas, Literatura Random House, 2018). The latter work, his first novel, has been awarded the 2017 Strega and Strega Giovani, Médicis Étranger and English Pen Translates prizes.