Luigi Malerba was an Italian author who wrote short stories (often written with Tonino Guerra

Tonino Guerra

Tonino Guerra is an Italian poet, writer and screenwriter who has collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors of the world.-Biography:Guerra was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna....

), historical novels, and screenplays, and who co-founded the Gruppo 63, based on Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 and Structuralism

Structuralism

Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...

. Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...

 said that Malerba was defined post-modern

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...

, but that's not all true, because he is maliciously ironic, unpredictable, and ambiguous. He was one of the most important exponents of the Italian literary moviment called Neoavanguardia

Neoavanguardia

The neoavanguardia was an avant-garde Italian literary movement, characterized by a strong push towards formal experimentation in language...

, along with Balestrini

Nanni Balestrini

Nanni Balestrini is an Italian experimental poet, author and visual artist of the Neoavanguardia movement.- Context :Nanni Balestrini is associated with the Italian writers movement Neoavanguardia. He wrote for the magazine Il Verri, co-directed Alfabeta and was one of the Italian writers...

, Sanguineti

Edoardo Sanguineti

Edoardo Sanguineti was an Italian writer who was born in Genoa.-Biography:During the 1960s he was a leader of the neo avant-garde Gruppo 63 movement, founded in 1963 at Solunto....

, and Manganelli

Giorgio Manganelli

Giorgio Manganelli was an Italian journalist, avant-garde writer and literary critic. A native of Milan, he was one of the leaders of the avant-garde literary movement in Italy in the 1960s. He was a baroque and expressionist writer. Manganelli translated Edgar Allan Poe's complete stories and...

.

He was the first writer to win the Prix Médicis étranger in 1970. He also won the Brancati Prize in 1979, the Grinzane Cavour Prize in 1989 (with Stefano Jacomuzzi and Raffaele La Capria

Raffaele La Capria

Raffaele La Capria is an Italian writer, known especially for the three novels which were collected as Tre romanzi di una giornata.-Biography:...

), the Viareggio Prize

Viareggio Prize

The Viareggio Literary Prize is a prestigious Italian literary award, whose first edition was in 1930, and is named after the Tuscan city of Viareggio...

 and the Feronia Prize in 1992.

Stories and novels

• La scoperta dell'alfabeto (1963)
• Il serpente (1966)
• Salto mortale (1968, winner of Prix Médicis
  Prix Médicis
  The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by Gala Barbisan and Jean-Pierre Giraudoux. It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent."...
  
  )
• Il protagonista (1973)
• Mozziconi (1975)
• Storiette (1977)
• Il pataffio (1978)
• Le galline pensierose (1980)
• Diario di un sognatore (1981)
• Storiette tascabili (1984)
• Il pianeta azzurro (1986)
• Testa d'argento (1988)
• Il fuoco greco (1990, set in the Byzantine Empire
  Byzantine Empire
  The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
  
  )
• Le pietre volanti (1992)
• Le maschere (1994)
• Itaca per sempre (1997)
• Pinocchio con gli stivali
• Città e dintorni (essays, 2001)
• Il circolo di Granada (2002)

English translations

Two of Malerba's books have been translated into English (as of July 2007). Both were translated by William Weaver and are currently out of print.

• Il serpente as The Serpent
• Salto mortale as What Is This Buzzing? Do You Hear It Too?

Scenarios

• The Overcoat (1952)
• Catch As Catch Can
  Catch As Catch Can (1967 film)
  Catch As Catch Can is a 1967 Italian comedy film directed by Franco Indovina. It was shown as part of a retrospective on Italian comedy at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.-Cast:* Vittorio Gassman - Bob Chiaramonte...
  
  (1967)
• The Girl and the General
  The Girl and the General
  The Girl and the General is a 1967 anti-war Italian comedy film, starred by Rod Steiger and Virna Lisi and produced by Carlo Ponti.In it, a young woman and a soldier team up to deliver an Austrian General to Italian forces during World War I...
  
  (1967)
• Oh, Grandmother's Dead
  Oh, Grandmother's Dead
  Oh, Grandmother's Dead is a 1969 Italian comedy film directed by Mario Monicelli and starring Sergio Tofano.-Cast:* Sirena Adgemova as Sparta* Carole André as Claretta* Wanda Capodaglio as Adelaide Ghia, the grandmother* Peter Chatel as Guido...
  
  (1969)