2017 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Luigi Pirandello, the Italian dramatist and novelist who was awarded in 1934 the Nobel Prize in Literature for “for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art”. Pirandello was born in Agrigento, Sicily, on the 28th of June, 1867 and wrote an impressive number of dramas which were published, between 1918 and 1935, under the collective title of Maschere nude (Naked Masks), making him one of the most prolific and appreciated theatrical authors of his time.

The problem of identity maintains the center-stage in all of his writings, where he repeatedly showed his fascination for the ironies inherent in belief in a single absolute identity, which he considered almost unachievable in human beings. Pirandello’s unique understanding of psychology matched with a writing style that proceeded from the realistic approach of the Verismo authors, many of whom came from Sicily.