Draft:Livia Manera Sambuy

Livia Manera Sambuy is an Italian author, journalist, critic, and documentary filmmaker.

Career
A cultural reporter and critic, Manera in the 1980s and 1990s wrote for various Italian newsmagazines and daily newspapers, among which Panorama, L’Espresso, Liberal, La Repubblica and La Stampa. Since the year 2000 she is a staff writer at the Italian national newspaper Corriere della Sera, specialized in the work of fiction and nonfiction writers, of the English-speaking world.

Her profiles of writers include among which Julian Barnes, Vikram Chandra, E.L. Doctorow, Richard Ford, Paula Fox, Mavis Gallant, Ian McEwan, Joseph Mitchell, Edna O’Brien, Philip Roth, Arundhati Roy, Tom Stoppard, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, and many others..

Her writings appeared also on the International Herald Tribune, The Believer, The Paris Review , The New Yorker , El Pais.

As a filmmaker, she is the author of the French/German ARTE documentary film Philip Roth sans complexe, (2011). She is also wrote and co-directed with William Karel Philip Roth: Unmasked for PBS’s “American Masters” series (2013). “Mr. Karel and Ms. Manera spent 10 days in his company, in New York and at his house in western Connecticut, and succeeded in putting him at ease. He is, for 90 minutes, marvelous company — expansive, funny, generous and candid.”

Her first narrative nonfiction book, Non scrivere di me (Don’t write about me), published in 2015, won the University of Camerino Award.[9]      A work of literary nonfiction, it is both a memoir and a collection of “intimate portraits” of eight north American writers (Mavis Gallant, Judith Thurman, David Foster Wallace, Joseph Mitchell, Richard Ford, Paula Fox, James Purdy, Philip Roth).“Great is the empathy the author establishes with ‘her’ writers: laying them bare, of course, but also laying herself bare.”

Her following book In Search of Amrit Kaur (2022) is the story of a quest: the author’s efforts to uncover the truth behind the story of an Indian princess said to have sold her jewels in German occupied Paris to help Jewish friends leave France. As a consequence, she was arrested and allegedly died in a concentration camp. A work of investigative journalism, historical research as well as a personal journey, the book won the 2023 Capalbio International Award. “The author’s search for information about Kaur takes her from Maryland to Paris; Pune, India; and beyond as she turns up fragmentary evidence from the princess’s past, discovering that Kaur passionately advocated for women’s rights, left behind her young children and husband after he married a second wife, and endured harsh conditions at a Besançon, France, concentration camp during WWII.”

Part of the mystery is also that Amrit Kaur’s 80 years old daughter, Nirvana Devi, knows nothing about her mother, who abandoned her when she was 4. “At this point, Ms. Sambuy’s search for Amrit’s story acquires a new and poignant purpose—an ‘urgent desire.’ And it is this turn that gives her book its most essential grace. Her project is no longer merely to solve a confounding mystery. It is now also an act of humanity, to help a heartbroken daughter reconnect with her mother after a lifetime of separation”.

Manera Sambuy also worked in publishing, first as Publicity Director at Giulio Einaudi Editore in Turin (1990-1991), and later as literary scout for the Rizzoli RCS publishing group (Rizzoli, Bompiani, Marsilio, Archinto, Bur etc.), from 2001 until 2008. In 1986 she translated Raymond Carver's What we talk about when we talk about love for the Italian publisher Garzanti.

Based in Paris and in Tuscany, she has served on the board of advisors of the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Donnini (Florence) from 2002 to 2015, and on the jury of the foundation's Gregor von Rezzori International Prize, chaired by Beatrice Monti della Corte Rezzori, from 2007 to 2012.

She is currently on the Board of Advisors of the American Library in Paris