Livia de Stefani

Livia de Stefani (1913, Palermo–1991, Rome) was an Italian writer from Sicily. Her family owned a large feudal estate near Alcamo, where she encountered local power structures and the Mafia at an early age. These experiences informed her fiction. Her first successful novel, “Trauben schwarz wie Blut,” was published in 1953 and addressed the Mafia at an early stage in Italian literature. De Stefani wrote in a precise, clear style about Sicilian society and patriarchal structures. She was married to the sculptor Renato Signorini, with whom she had three children.