Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) published his debut novel, Boys Alive, in 1955. It was hailed as a masterpiece by prominent Italian writers and condemned as pornographic by Marxist critics and the conservative judiciary of Milan. In the decades that followed, he published many more novels, books of poetry, essays, and plays. He also became a screenwriter and filmmaker, collaborating with Federico Fellini on Le Notti di Cabiria and La Dolce Vita and directing films such as The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, The Hawks and the Sparrows, and Theorem, which Pasolini had first published as a novel earlier the same year. A figure of controversy due to his antiestablishment political views and homosexuality, he was brought to trial at least thirty-three times. He was brutally murdered under mysterious circumstances on the beach in Ostia, on the outskirts of Rome.