Strega Prize
most prestigious Italian literary award
The Strega Prize (Italian: Premio Strega [ˈprɛːmjo ˈstreːɡa]) is the most important Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction written in the Italian language by an author of any nationality and first published between 1 March of the previous year and 28/29 February.
History
In 1944 Maria and Goffredo Bellonci started to host a literary salon at their home in Rome. These Sunday gatherings of writers, artists and intellectuals grew to include many of the most notable figures of Italian cultural life. The group became known as the Amici della Domenica, or Sunday Friends. In 1947 the Belloncis, together with Guido Alberti, owner of the firm which produces the Strega liqueur, decided to inaugurate a prize for fiction, the winner being chosen by the Sunday friends.
The activities of the Bellonci circle and the institution of the prize were seen as marking a tentative return to ‘normality’ in Italian cultural life: a feature of the reconstruction which followed the years of Fascism, war, occupation and liberation.
The first winner of the Strega, elected by the Sunday Friends, was Ennio Flaiano, for his first and only novel Tempo di uccidere, which is set in Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. It has been translated into English as A Time to Kill and The Short Cut.
Maria Bellonci published a history of the Strega prize, titled Come un racconto gli anni del premio Strega, in 1971.
“Strega Prize” enters the record as most prestigious Italian literary award. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Strega, Prize and most can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Strega Prize” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Strega, Prize and most provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q731542. The Library of Congress control number is sh85106365. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1944 and 1971.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Strega Prize” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.