Pia Pera

Pia Pera (12 March 1956 – 26 July 2016) was an Italian novelist, essayist, and translator.
Born in Lucca, the daughter of the jurist Giuseppe, Pera started her writing career in 1992, with the short stories collection La bellezza dell'asino ("The Beauty of the Donkey"). She got international notoriety with her 1995 novel Lo's Diary (Italian: Diario di Lo), a retelling of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita from the point of view of the female title character. In later years she specialized in novels connected to her passion for gardening.
Pera was also a translator of Russian novels and an essayist. She was a professor of Russian literature at the University of Trento. Her last work was the semi-autobiographic novel Al giardino ancora non l’ho detto ("I still have not told it to the garden").
Pera died at 60 years old of motor neuron disease.