Giovanni Orelli (30 October 1928, in
Bedretto, Switzerland – 3 December 2016, in
Lugano) was a Swiss poet and writer who worked in
Italian and the
Ticinese dialect. His cousin
Giorgio Orelli was a poet and literary critic.
Life
He studied at the
University of Zurich and the
University of Milan, graduating in medieval and humanist
philology. He spent much of his life in Lugano where - until he reached pension age - he was a teacher at the cantonal lyceum. His writing career began in 1965 with the novel L'anno della valanga, which won the Veillon Prize.
He won the
Schiller Prize in 1972 with his novel La festa del ringraziamento. He won the
Gottfried-Keller-Preis in 1997 for his complete oeuvre. He was also politically engaged, initially with the Independent Socialist Party, contributing to its weekly paper Politica nuova. He then moved to the
Swiss Socialist Party and was elected for one term as a deputy to the Great Council for the
Canton of Ticino - he was also elected to that role the four previous years but had been unable to take up his seat due to his teaching duties. On 17 May 2012, he and
Peter Bichsel were joint winners of the Schiller Grand Prize, both for their complete oeuvre.
^Also translated into French (Gallimard, Parigi), German (Limmat-Verlag, Zurigo), and English (Dalkey Archive Press, Champaign, IL).
Bibliography
Pietro De Marchi, Fabio Pusterla (ed.) : Sempre, senza misura. Omaggio a Giovanni Orelli. Bellinzona, Edizioni Sottoscala, 2013.
ISBN978-88-95471-17-4.