Vittorio Giardino

Background

Vittorio Giardino was born on December 24, 1946 in Bologna, Italy.

Education

In 1969 Vittorio Giardino received a degree in electrical engineering.

Career

After graduation, Vittorio worked as an electrical engineer. However, nine years later, he decided to leave his field and became a full-time graphic novelist. In 1979 his first character appeared: Detective Sam Pezzo, who was introduced to readers in the pages of La Città Futura, an Italian comic magazine.

In 1982 Giardino created Max Lriedman and the Orient Express, a series of spy adventures set in the 1940s. He is still creating these tales. In 1984 Vittorio published the adventures of Little Ego in Glamour magazine. Little Ego is a dreamy girl who is obsessed with her fantasy life.

Giardino has also created the story of Jonas Finkel, a Czech boy in communist-controlled Prague. First appearing in A Jew in Communist Prague: Loss of Innocence, Finkel’s tale reflects life in a Stalinist country: red tape, betrayal by friends, government intrusion into every area of life, and creeping paranoia. Finkel’s situation is made worse by the fact that he is a Jew in an anti-Semitic state. His father is arrested, and the family is not told where he is imprisoned. In the Washington Post Book World, a reviewer praised Giardino’s detailed drawings as well as his touching story. As this first installment ends, there is some small hope that Jonas and his mother will be reunited with his father. In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer commented that Giardino tells his story with "virtuosic intensity."

In the second volume of the series, A Jew in Communist Prague: Adolescence, Jonas gets a job in a bookstore and makes friends with a girl at the high school which he is forbidden to attend. However, these ordinary events are played out on a backdrop of Iron Curtain control: because Finkel’s father criticized the system, he has been forced out of school and into work, and there is a constant threat that others will spy on him and report him to the authorities, and he will be imprisoned like his father.

In the third volume, A Jew in Communist Prague: Rebellion, Finkel is expected to spy on his boss at the Pinkel Bookstore. The State suspects his boss of being a member of a group that is translating and distributing subversive literature. Instead of spying on his boss, Jonas protects him by hiding the forbidden books the night before his boss is arrested. Jonas himself is a member of a forbidden reading group, and when some soldiers catch him and his friends reading in a park, they run, leaving some of the incriminating literature behind. This puts the whole group in danger of reprisals from the government, including arrest and imprisonment. Jonas falls in love with Tatiana, who is also in the reading group, but her parents forbid her to see him when they find out that he is Jewish and that his father is in prison for crimes against the State. Eventually, they move to Moscow to keep the two young people apart.

In School Library Journal, Susan Salpini praised Giardino’s ability to portray nuances of character through the subtlety of his drawings, as well as the realistic depiction of 1950s Prague.

In No Pasarán! Giardino shifts to the era of the Spanish Civil War. The main character, Max Friedman, is a French citizen and successful businessperson who lives in Geneva, Switzerland. His life is mysterious, but he is persuaded to go to Spain by the wife of a friend who has not heard from her husband in two months. On the way, Friedman’s train is almost destroyed by a bomb and a gunman tries to kill him. Friedman makes his way toward the Front, searching for his friend. The novel ends in a cliffhanger as Friedman nears the battlelines, clearly paving the way for a sequel. A Kirkus Reviews writer described it as "compelling," and in Booklist, Ray Olson praised Giardino’s "cinematic" style.

Achievements

• For decades Giardino has been acknowledged as one of the best – a maestro of "the ninth art". His first adventure Hungarian Rhapsody brought him in the limelight of the international comic scene. Max Fridman adventures have been published in 18 countries, and are universally recognized as comic book classics.
  
  The book about Jonas Fink won the Angoulème Alph-Art prize for best foreign work in 1995 as well as a Harvey at San Diego in 1999.

Works

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• book

  • A Jew in Communist Prague: Loss of Innocence

    (A brilliantly written graphic novel about the real human ...)

    1997
  • No Pasaran!

    (The leftist forces are retreating north as Franco's army ...)

    2002
  • Orient Gateway

    (Summer 1938. Europe is teetering on the brink. In the far...)

    1987
  • A Jew in Communist Prague: Adolescence 1997
  • A Jew in Communist Prague: Rebellion 1998
  • Little Ego 1989

Personality

Vittorio Giardino has maniacal attention to details. This has been reflected in both his art and his stories. He is a bibliophile and he has good taste.

Interests

• Reading

References

• Vittorio Giardino - Home Official web-site