Elisabetta Sgarbi is editorial director for Bompiani.

Since the very start of her career in the book industry she showed a deep interest in the nonconformist literature and passionately supported the so-called minor literatures and emerging authors; in particular, novelist Paulo Coelho comes from Brazil: since 1995, when his books first appeared in the Italian market, has become one of the most world-famous writers. Besides Amin Maalouf and Hanif Kureishi, she also published the Nobel prize winner José Saramago and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham.

Amongst the new, “other” voices are the Pakistan Mohammed Hanif, Algerian Amin Zaoui, Iranian Parochista Khakpour. Among the Italians stand the complete works by Edoardo Nesi, books by enrico ghezzi, Antonio Rezza and Carmelo Bene, and also Andrea De Carlo, Pino Roveredo, Diego Marani, Flavio Soriga, Paola Capriolo, Alain Elkann, Chiara Gamberale, Sandro Veronesi, Camilla Baresani, Mario Fortunato, Paolo Nori.

Within the series Overlook, she published inquiries by Sandro Veronesi into death sentence, the memoir by Aleida Mach, Che Guevara’s wife, historical works by Pierluigi Panza on the life of Piranesi, essays on the Burman resistance by Carmen Lasorella.

The Essays series, apart from the brilliant Histories of Beauty and Ugliness by Umberto Eco, includes books on the Greek philosophy by Roberto Peregalli, popular scientific works by Nobel Prize winner Thomas C. Schelling, great historiographic reconstructions by Orazio Cancila on Florio legend, unpublished works on the Romantic Age by the great historian Isaiah Berlin. Within Passaggi and Assaggi series, Bompiani published works by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Maurizio Ferraris, Corinne Maier, Michel Houellebecq, Osho, while the Grandi Passaggi and Grandi Assaggi series include books by Remo Bodei, Roberto Ippolito, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, Dario Antiseri e Giulio Giorello, Paolo Berizzi, Annamaria Bernardini de Pace.

In 1990, with Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Alain Elkann and Elisabetta Rasy, she launched Panta, a quarterly journal for literature, the only one in its kind, with a number of lectures, short stories, fragments and visions of emerging writers as well as Nobel Prize winners.

Elisabetta Sgarbi has personally edited Panta Sesso (with Alain Elkann, 1991), Panta Notte (with Vincenzo Pardini, 1993) and Panta Conversazioni (with Alain Elkann, 1997) and Panta Visioni (with Francesco Casetti, 2008).

She also founded inVersi: (books with cd enclosed, edited with Aldo Nove) that gathers poems, music and poetry reading. In this collection appeared Casual sex, by the English performer Murray Lachlan Young. In 1994, she was the first to publish Ladro di sguardi, a collection of photographs shot by Stanley Kubrick while he was collaborating to the magazine "Look", between 1945 and 1949.

In 2005 she published Il sopravvissuto by Antonio Scurati ( which, together with the short-stories collection Mandami a dire by Pino Roveredo came equal first at the Campiello Award) starting a collaboration with these two authors that saw the publication of various titles over the years (the two most recent books are: Il bambino che sognava la fine del mondo by Antonio Scurati and Attenti alle rose by Pino Roveredo, both in 2009), while in 2007 she launched the new series Agone, edited by Scurati himself and presented as an ideal place aimed at "bringing back the agonistic spirit within the cultural context, by both cultivating an idea of excellence and offering a publishing training ground in order to practice forms of intellectual engagement, which should not depend anymore on the political stance or ideological alignments, yet on the cultural work considered in itself as a form of ethical, social and civil militancy"

Among the books published so far are: Igino Domanin, Apologia della barbarie, Daniele Giglioli, All'ordine del giorno è il terrore, Andrea Kerbaker, Lo stato dell'arte, Telmo Pievani, In difesa di Darwin, Gabriele Pedullà, In piena luce, Alessandro Zaccuri, In terra sconsacrata, Marco Marzano, Cattolicesimo magico.

In 2009 she launched the series Faq Books, including various thematic books in which the author works out a number of questions and answers that help readers getting into the heart of a given topic of great interest.

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