Fiction. Drama. Translated from the Italian by Paul Vangelisti. Born in Trieste in 1939, Claudio Magris is a major Italian scholar, translator, and writer. His most noted fiction, Danubio (Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea), a work the author describes as a "drowned novel," in which he tracks the run of the Danube from its sources to the sea, was published in 1986. He has been awarded the Strega Prize, the Erasmus Prize and the Leipzig Book Prize, among others, and has several times been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. The plays Stadelmann (1988) and Le Voci (1999), both included in this volume along with To Have Been, have established him also as a significant Italian playwright.