1. Alberto Moravia once remarked that the most important facts of his life had been his illness, a tubercular infection of the bones that confined him to a bed for five years and Fascism because they both caused him to suffer and do things he otherwise would not have done.
Alberto Moravia's writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie.
Between 1959 and 1962 Alberto Moravia was president of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers.
Alberto Moravia Pincherle was born in Via Sgambati in Rome, Italy, to a wealthy middle-class family.
Alberto Moravia's chosen pen name "Moravia" equals to Moravia, which is one of historic Czech lands, and was linked to his paternal grandmother.
Alberto Moravia's Jewish Venetian father, Carlo, was an architect and a painter.
Alberto Moravia's family had interesting twists and developed a complex cultural and political character.
Alberto Moravia did not finish conventional schooling because, at the age of nine, he contracted tuberculosis of the bone, which confined him to bed for five years.
Alberto Moravia spent three years at home and two in a sanatorium near Cortina d'Ampezzo, in north-eastern Italy.
Alberto Moravia was an intelligent boy, and devoted himself to reading books and some of his favourite authors were Giosue Carducci, Giovanni Boccaccio, Fyodor Dostoevsky, James Joyce, Ludovico Ariosto, Carlo Goldoni, William Shakespeare, Moliere, Nikolai Gogol and Stephane Mallarme.
Alberto Moravia learned French and German and wrote poems in French and Italian.
In 1927, Alberto Moravia met Corrado Alvaro and Massimo Bontempelli and started his career as a journalist with the magazine 900.
The next year, Alberto Moravia started collaborating with the newspaper La Stampa, then edited by author Curzio Malaparte.
Alberto Moravia began collaborating with Corrado Alvaro, writing for important newspapers such as Il Mondo and Il Corriere della Sera, the latter publishing his writing until his death.
In 1953, Alberto Moravia founded the literary magazine Nuovi Argomenti, which featured Pier Paolo Pasolini among its editors.
Alberto Moravia's criticism is collected in the volume Al Cinema.
Alberto Moravia went to live with the young writer Dacia Maraini and concentrated on theatre.
In 1984, Alberto Moravia was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the Italian Communist Party.
Alberto Moravia was a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, having been nominated 13 times between 1949 and 1965.
In September 1990, Alberto Moravia was found dead in the bathroom of his Lungotevere apartment, in Rome.
Alberto Moravia's writing style was highly regarded for being extremely stark and unadorned, characterised by elementary, common words in an elaborate syntax.