Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini

Quarantotti Gambini was born in Pisino, Istria, then part of Austria-Hungary, in an Italian family originally from Rovigno.[1][2] His father, Giovanni, a teacher, was a prominent Italian irredentist militant in Istria. His family would let a flag of the Lombard league with the coat of arms of the city of Capodistria wave from the window of their villa during Austrian times.[3] During the first World War, his father ended up with Vito Timmel in a semi-internment camp for military personnel of "unascertained loyalty" in Radkersburg.[3] His mother, Fides Histriae Gambini, was from Capodistria (today Koper, Slovenia), where Pier Antonio spent much of his childhood and teenage years, in the villa of his maternal grandfather in Semedella.[4][5] This place would figure in many of his novels. Istria was integrated into the Kingdom of Italy in 1919 as a result of World War I, fulfilling the aspirations of Quarantotti's father.

Quarantotti Gambini met Richard Hughes in 1927, as the English writer was travelling in Istria, and received literary advice from him.[3][6] He became friends with Umberto Saba in 1929 in Trieste.[3][5] He left Capodistria soon after to study law in Milan and Turin, where he graduated in 1937 from the University of Turin.[5] In 1932, he published his first short stories, collected in the volume I nostri simili.[5] From 1933, he worked for the newspaper La Stampa.[5] He was sent as a war reporter to cover the Ethiopian War,[4] then the Spanish Civil War. In 1937, his first novel, La Rosa Rossa was published by the publisher Treves, in Milan.[5]

During World War II, he was director of the city library of Trieste,[5] from where, given his opposition to the annexation of Trieste and Istria to Yugoslavia, he had to flee in 1945 when Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslav Partisans entered the city.[5] He settled in Venice, where he lived the rest of his life.[5] From 1945 until 1949, he was head of a semi-clandestine radio aimed at Italians in the Free Territory of Trieste, Radio Venezia Giulia.[5] He was an advocate for an independent Istria, but the London memorandum of 1954 partitioned the Free Territory, giving Trieste to Italy, but the rest of Istria to Yugoslavia. From then on, Quarantotti Gambini was not authorized to visit the places of his birth and youth. His major works date from this period of exile, and are heavily autobiographical (Amor militare, 1955, Il Cavallo Tripoli).[7] His 1958 novel La Calda Vita is a subtle exploration of the transition from childhood to adulthood, its sensuality and cruelty.[8]

He received the Bagutta Prize in 1948 for L'Onda dell'incrociatore. In 1963, he was a member of the jury of the Campiello Prize.[9][4][10]