Giovanni Orelli


Giovanni Orelli 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.

Works

Prose