Gaia Servadio

Gaia Servadio (born 1938) is an Italian writer.

Early life

Servadio was born in Padua, of Jewish and Sicilian ancestry. She received a bachelor's degree from London's Camberwell School of Art.

Career

Her first novel Tanto gentile e tanto onesta, aka Melinda, was published in 1967 by Feltrinelli in Italy and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK, and was a "a runaway success".

Personal life

Servadio married the British art historian William Mostyn-Owen, and they had three children, Owen, Allegra and Orlando. In 1968, they were living in "23 rooms or so" of one wing of Aberuchill Castle, Perthshire, Scotland. Their daughter Allegra was the first wife of the politician Boris Johnson.

Servadio lives in Belgravia, London.

Works

Fiction

• Tanto gentile e tanto onesta (Feltrinelli, 1967)
• Don Giovanni e L'azione consiste (Feltrinelli, 1968)
• Un'infanzia diversa (Rizzoli, 1988)
• Il lamento di Arianna (La Tartaruga, 1988)
• La storia di R. (Rizzoli, 1990)
• E i morti non sanno (Dario Flaccovio Ed., 2005)
• Raccogliamo le vele - Autobiografia (Feltrinelli, 2014)

Non-fiction

• Luchino Visconti (Mondadori, 1980)
• La Donna del Rinascimento (Garzanti, 1986)
• Traviata. Vita di Giuseppina Strepponi (Rizzoli, 1994)
• Mozia. Alla scoperta di una civiltà scomparsa (Flaccovio Dario, 2003)
• Scritti siriani dell'antichità: testi preclassici e classici (A cura di G.S.; Pisa e Roma, Fabrizio Serra editore, 2010)
• Gioachino Rossini Una vita (Feltrinelli 2015)