Niccolò Ammaniti was born in Rome in 1966. He has written three novels and a collection of short stories. His first novel, Steal You Away, was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and he won the prestigious Italian Viareggio-Repaci Prize for Fiction with his bestselling novel I'm Not Scared which has been translated
into forty languages and became a prize-winning film. His third novel, The Crossroads, received the Premio Strega, Italy's equivalent of the Man Booker.