Novels, such as Time of Desecration (1978), of Italian writer Alberto Moravia, pen name of Alberto Pincherle, explore the alienation and ennui of the middle class. Alberto Moravia, pseudonimo di Alberto Pincherle (1907 – 1990), è stato uno scrittore, giornalista, sceneggiatore, saggista, drammaturgo, poeta, reporter di viaggio, critico cinematografico e politico italiano. Considerato uno dei più importanti romanzieri del XX secolo, ha esplorato nelle sue opere i temi della sessualità, dell'alienazione sociale e dell'esistenzialismo. Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle, was one of the leading Italian novelists of the twentieth century whose novels explore matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism. He was also a journalist, playwright, essayist and film critic. Moravia was an atheist, his writing was marked by its factual, cold, precise style, often depicting the malaise of the bourgeoisie, underpinned by high social and cultural awareness. Moravia believed that writers must, if they were to represent reality, assume a moral position, a clearly conceived political, social, and philosophical attitude, but also that, ultimately, "A writer survives in spite of his beliefs". Between 1959 and 1962 Moravia was president of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers.

Jean Renoir was a film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was also the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted French stage and film actor; the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer; and the father of Alain Renoir, late professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. As an author, he wrote the definitive biography of his father, Renoir, My Father (1962).

Dino Buzzati Traverso (1906 – 1972) è stato uno scrittore, giornalista, pittore, drammaturgo, librettista, scenografo, costumista e poeta italiano. Dino Buzzati Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel Il deserto dei Tartari, translated into English as The Tartar Steppe.

Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic. He was born in Brest. He studied naval medicine in Bordeaux. He traveled and lived in Polynesia (1903–1905) and China (1909–1914 and 1917). He died by accident in a forest in Huelgoat, France ('under mysterious circumstances' and reputedly with an open copy of Hamlet by his side). In 1934, the French state inscribed his name on the walls of the Panthéon because of his sacrifice for his country during World War I. He gave his name to the Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2 University of medicine, literature and social sciences in Bordeaux under the Academy of Bordeaux where he studied, and to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Brest where he was born. From Wikipedia

Giovanni Arpino was an Italian writer and journalist. Born in Pula (in Istria, then part of Italy) to Piedmontese parents, Arpino moved to Bra in the Province of Cuneo. Here he married Caterina Brero before moving to Turin, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He graduated in 1951 with a thesis on the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, and the following year made his literary debut with the novel Sei stato felice, Giovanni, published by Einaudi. He also took up sports journalism, writing for the daily papers La Stampa and Il Giornale; together with Gianni Brera at the La Gazzetta dello Sport he brought a new literary quality to Italian writing on sport. His most important work in this line was the 1977 football novel Azzurro tenebra. Arpino also wrote plays, short stories, epigrams and stories for children. In Italy he got to know the Argentinian writer, and fellow sports enthusiast, Osvaldo Soriano and won the Strega Prize of 1964 with L'ombra delle colline, the Premio Campiello of 1972 with Randagio è l'eroe and the SuperCampiello of 1980 with Il fratello italiano. His novels are characterised by a dry and ironical style. His story Il buio e il miele was made into two films: Dino Risi's Profumo di donna, with Vittorio Gassman, and Martin Brest's Scent of a Woman, which earnt Al Pacino an Academy Award for Best Actor. Arpino died in Turin in 1987. His links to his childhood town of Bra have been maintained by the establishment of a multi-functional cultural centre and of a prize for children's literature.