Grazia Deledda: Voice of Sardinia

Grazia Deledda was to live for another ten years after receiving the Nobel Prize, years marked by a painful and slowly spreading breast cancer—the incurable malady of her protagonist Maria Concezione in the fine novel La chiesa della solitudine (The Church of Solitude). The novel was her last, published in the year of her death. Deledda died on August 15, 1936.

Despite her disease, Deledda kept to her schedule, beginning the day with a late breakfast, hours of reading, rest after lunch, and then writing for two or three hours in the afternoon, seven days a week, year after year. She produced four handwritten pages each day. Her writing was her life. She was a quiet and reserved woman, who did not speak much. She enjoyed friendly, intimate talk and traditional feasts and celebrations, but not political debates, serious discussions, parties, or society. Yet, in her quiet way, she was gathering the material for her books, listening and observing intently, just as she had done since her childhood. The outcome was over thirty novels and some four hundred short stories, most of them collected in nineteen books. She also wrote many articles, some plays, an opera libretto, and poems.

Nobelprize.org
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