Carmine Abate

Carmine Abate (born 24 October 1954) is an Italian writer. He has written numerous short stories, novels and essays, mainly focusing on issues of migration and the encounters between disparate cultures.

Abate spent his childhood in Carfizzi, a small village of the Arbëreshë community in the southern region of Calabria. He grew up speaking Arbëresh, a variant of the Albanian language. After graduating from the University of Bari, he moved to Hamburg, where his father had earlier emigrated. There he taught at a school for immigrants and began publishing his first stories. In 1984, his first collection of short stories appeared under the title Den Koffer und weg! This was followed by a socio-anthropological study conducted jointly with Meike Behrmann; their account of a community of Calabrian emigrants was published as I Germanesi. Having spent more than a decade in Germany, Abate returned to Italy and settled in Besenello in Trentino, where he continues to work as a writer and teacher.

Abate has published several acclaimed novels and short story collections. Two of his award-winning books have been translated into English - Tra due mari (2002) under the English title Between Two Seas, and the novel La festa del ritorno (2004) as The Homecoming Party. His work has also been translated into several European languages and is now being translated into Arabic. He is represented by the leading publishing house Mondadori.

• Nel labirinto della vita, Rome: Juvenilia, 1977 (poetry)
• I Germanesi: storia e vita di una comunità calabrese e dei suoi emigranti, Carmine Abate and Meike Behrmann, Cosenza Pellegrini, 1986 (non-fiction)
• Il ballo tondo, Marietti, 1991 (novel)
• Shtegtimi i unazës, Pejë: Dukagjini, 1994
• Terre di andata, Argo, 1996 (poetry)
• La moto di Scanderbeg, Fazi, 1999 (winner of the Premio Racalmare-Leonardo Sciascia)
• Tra due mari, Mondadori, 2002 (winner of the Premio Società dei Lettori, Lucca-Roma)
• La festa del ritorno, Mondadori, (2004) (winner of the Premio Napoli, Premio Selezione Campiello and Premio Corrado Alvaro)
• Il muro dei muri, Mondadori, 2006 (short stories)
• Il mosaico del tempo grande, Mondadori, 2006 (novel)
• Gli anni veloci, Mondadori, 2008 (novel)
• Vivere per addizione a altri viaggi, Mondadori, 2010 (short stories)
• Terre di andata. Poesie & proesie, Il Maestrale, 2011.
• La collina del vento, Mondadori, 2012 (Premio Campiello).