Biagio Marin was born on 29 June 1891 in Grado, a small island in the Lagoon of Venice, then part of the Habsburg Empire. The son of an innkeeper, he was raised by his grandmother because his mother died when he was still young. At nine he was sent to Gorizia, Italy, to attend a German-language secondary school. Later he attended the Royal High Schools at Pisino. In 1911 he moved to Florence, enrolled in the Institute of Higher Education, and actively participated in the leftist literary and political movement promoted by the literary review the Voce. In 1912 he went to the University of Vienna, where, for two years, he studied humanities. In 1915 he married Giuseppina Marini, with whom he had four children. He was drafted into the Austrian army during World War I and sent to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Marin succeeded in deserting to Italy, and after the Caporetto defeat he...