Giorgio Scerbanenco "File:Scerbanenco.jpg" by Gloriettina is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Non-standard plots, a masterful writing style, and the ability to keep the intrigue alive made Scerbanenco quite popular.
Yuri Shapoval, historian
Giorgio Scerbanenco was an Italian writer of Ukrainian origin called the “father of the Italian detective” and “Italian Simenon.”
Giorgio Scerbanenco was born in Kyiv on July 28, 1911, to a Ukrainian father and an Italian mother. His father, a Latin and Ancient Greek teacher, a Ukrainian officer, was shot by the Bolsheviks during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921. So Volodymyr and his mother moved to Rome and later to Milan. In 1927, the boy’s mother died, so to earn a living, he left his studies and went to work as a laborer.
His meeting with the Italian writer and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, who in the 1930s was the editor-in-chief of several influential publications in Milan, was a life-changing event. Cesare paved the way to great literature for talented young people, including G. Scerbanenco.
At first, Giorgio focused on writing love novels, which were very popular in Milan. In the late 1930s, he made a business trip to the United States. From there, he brought back many ideas for his new detective novels. In the early 1940s, he published five novels about the adventures of a fictional character, Boston police officer Arthur Jelling.
During 1943-1945, the writer was in Switzerland at the height of World War II. After the war, he returned to Milan. In 1963, he published “Venere privata” (A Private Venus), the first crime novel in the series about the Italian detective Duca Lamberti. It was a new-generation detective story, where the protagonist turned out to be an investigator and a fearless fighter for justice in Milan. During the 1960s, three more successful books in this series appeared: “Traditori di tutti” (Traitors to All), “I ragazzi del massacro” (The boys of the Massacre), and “I milanesi ammazzano al sabato” (The Milanese kill on Saturday). G. Scerbanenco is the author of more than 60 novels.
He died in 1969 in Milan. Today, his daughter Cecilia Scerbanenco is the guardian of his creative legacy. She is the president of her father’s personalized award, the Giorgio Scerbanenco-Noir In Festival Award, and the Scerbanenco@Lignano Award. Together with the public library of Lignano Sabbiadoro, Cecilia founded the Archivi Scerbanenco Foundation, which collects and organizes the writer’s manuscripts and documents and annually organizes the Lignano Noir Festival.
