Italy is mourning today the novelist, playwright and journalist Michela Murgia, who died at the age of 51 after a battle with cancer.

This leftist writer from Sardinia has been outspoken on many issues, including euthanasia and the rights of the LGBTI+ community.

Michela Murgia, who in 2010 won one of the most important Italian literary awards, the Premio Campiello, announced in May, in an interview with the newspaper Corriere della Sera, that she had stage four kidney cancer.

In the same interview she said her wish was to die when Prime Minister Georgia Meloni was no longer at the helm of government, saying she considered her government “fascist”. At the time, Meloni had replied that she too hoped that Michela Murgia would live long enough to see a different prime minister.

Born in 1972 in the Sardinian town of Campras, she made her literary debut in 2006 with the novel “Il Mondo Deve Sapere” (The World Must Know), a satire on telemarketing call center exploitation, which was turned into a play with the same title, while the script of the 2008 film “Tutta la Vita Davanti” (All Life Ahead) was based on it.

Her 2009 novel ‘Accabadora’ won prizes, including the Campiello and the Mondello International Literary Prize.

Last month Michela Murgia married actor and director Lorenzo Terenci.

Source: RES-MPE