Alessandro Piperno was born in Rome in 1972 and is a lecturer in French literature at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata. His publications include two biographical essays on Proust and Baudelaire: Proust antiebreo (Franco Angeli, 2000); Il demone reazionario. Sulle tracce del «Baudelaire» di Sartre (Gaffi Editore, 2007); and three novels published by Mondadori: Con le peggiori intenzioni (2005) winner of the Campiello and Viareggio Prizes for a first work; Persecuzioni (2010); Inseparabili (2012) winner of the Strega Prize. Persecuzioni and Inseparabili were then published in the diptych Il fuoco amico dei ricordi (2012), a finalist for the French awards Médicis e Femina and winner of the Prix du Méilleur Livre Étranger. In 2013, Mondadori published his Pubblici infortuni.