Riccardo Bacchelli, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI^[1] (Bologna, 19 April 1891 – Monza, 8 October 1985) was an Italian writer.

His first novel was Il filo meraviglioso di Lodovico Clo’ (The wonderful thread of Lodovico Clo). Then he wrote La città degli amanti (The City of Lovers). He was one of the founders of the Bagutta Prize. His more popular work was Il mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po), (1938-1940). A film from the novel was released in 1949.
Later novels from 1967 to 1978 include: Il rapporto segreto (The secret relationship), Afrodite: un romanzo d'amore (Aphrodite: a love novel), Il progresso è un razzo (Progress is a rocket) and Il sommergibile (The submarine).

Riccardo Bacchelli was a member of the Accademia Italiana.

[edit] Il mulino del Po

The novel narrates in more than 2000 pages the lives, adventures and problems of Lazzaro Scacerni, who comes back from Russia where he had been a soldier of Napoleon, and his family, through a full century till the First World War. Lazzaro owns a mill on the river Po (hence the title) and, as well as his descendants, finds himself amid political turmoil, wars, economical hardship, class conflicts.
The historical, geographical and social background was painstakingly researched by Bacchelli, who was able to build a very large and comprehensive portrait of life in rural Italy in the XIX century.
The language and style of this novel show that Bacchelli held Alessandro Manzoni as his model; the structure of Il mulino del Po reveals the author's attention to contemporary European novels.^[2]

[edit] References

1. ^ quirinale.it
2. ^ "strutture narrative spesso acute e sottili, che mostrano una notevole attenzione alle forme del contemporaneo romanzo europeo" (Giulio Ferroni, Profilo storico della letteratura italiana, Einaudi scuola, Milano 1992, p.956)

[edit] External links

• http://www.maat.it/livello2/fascismo-manifesto.htm
• http://www.riccardobacchelli.it/

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