Writer and journalist, born in Pachino, Sicily, S Italy. He became famous for such novels as Don Giovanni in Sicilia (1941), Il bell'Antonio (1949), and Paolo il caldo (1955), which satirize, with a touch of the grotesque, Italy during the Fascist years, and especially the very Italian phenomenon of gallismo (the preening male). Bourgeois hypocrisy is the subject of his best-known play La governante (1952). Diario romano (1961) and Il borghese e l'immensità (1973) are collections of his articles.