Eugenio Corti, Italian soldier, author, and playwright (born 1921)

Eugenio Corti was an Italian writer born in Besana in Brianza. After participating in the Italian retreat from Russia in World War II, and a period of recovery, he joined the regular Italian army in southern Italia, to fight the German along with the Allies. Based on these experiences, he wrote Few Returned and The Last Soldiers of the King. His seminal work, however, is The Red Horse, a 1000-page novel again based on his experiences and those of his fellow Italians during and after the Second World War. It was voted the best book of the 1980s in a public survey in Italy and has been translated into eight languages, including Japanese. It has had thirty-four editions since it was first published in May 1983.