Architecture graduate at Florence University, in 1984 Sandro Veronesi published his first and only collection of poems entitled Il resto del cielo (The Remainder of the Sky”) and in 1988 his first novel Per dove parte questo treno allegro (“For Where this Merry Train is Leaving”), followed by Gli sfiorati (“The Skimmed”, 1990) and Venite venite B-52 (“Come, Come, B-52s”, 1995), inspired to US literature and winner of the Fiesole Book Award in 1996. The Force of the Past (2000), on which the film of the same name by Piergiorgio Gay is based, won the Viareggio and Campiello Book Prizes and has been translated into 15 languages. Quiet Chaos (2005), Strega Book Prize winner in 2006, was published in 20 countries and became in 2008 a film directed by Antonello Grimaldi starring Nanni Moretti. A contributor to several important Italian publications, Veronesi has also published two collections of interviews, Cronache italiane (“Italian Chronicles”, 1992) and Live (1996), an investigative book on the death penalty throughout the world, Occhio per occhio (“An Eye for an Eye”, 1992), and a collection of articles, Superalbo (2002).
With La nave di Teseo, he published Un dio ti guarda in 2016, Cani d’estate in 2018, and Il colibrì in 2019. The latter was named “Book of the Year” in the La Lettura Quality Rankings by Corriere della Sera, and went on to win the 74th Premio Strega the following year. After Paolo Volponi, Veronesi became the second author to win the Strega Prize twice. In 2023, he returned to Bompiani, co-authoring Comandante with Edoardo De Angelis — a novelization of the film of the same name, which they also co-wrote as screenwriters.
