Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), novelist, poet, and critic, ranks as perhaps the most important Italian novelist of the 20th century. His work fuses considerations of poetic and epic representation, the theme of solitude, and the concept of myth.

Cesare Pavese was born on Sept. 9, 1908, at Santo Stefano Belbo in the Piedmont, the son of a lower-middle-class family of rural background. Although his family lived in Turin, Pavese never severed his childhood ties with the countryside. He lived with his parents and, after their death, with his sister's family until the end of his life.

After graduating from the University of Turin in 1930 with a thesis on Walt Whitman, Pavese began translating American novels and worked for the publishing house of Einaudi. In 1935 Pavese was arrested with members of the anti-Fascist group Giustizia e Libertà and was expelled from the Fascist party, to which he had belonged since 1932. He...