Naples. Publisher Tullio Pironti passed away at his home in central Naples at the age of 84.
He began his publishing career in 1972 with the book-reportage The Long Night of the Fedayeen written by the journalist Carrattelli, in the aftermath of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Games.
His family began their book-selling activity after the persecution suffered in the Bourbon kingdom by Michele Pironti (1814-1885), a magistrate, imprisoned together with Luigi Settembrini and Carlo Poerio.
Tullio Pironti continued his father's and grandfather's work. As a publisher, he was responsible for introducing foreign authors to Italy, particularly North American authors, from Don DeLillo to Bret Easton Ellis, but also Raymond Caraver and the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz.
“ I won the rights to Bret Easton Ellis in a telephone auction. They explained to me that the only way to win was to offer more than $50 million, beyond which the major publishing houses had to convene a board of directors. I offered $55 million, the equivalent of $200 million today. The gambler's recklessness prevailed,” he recounted in an interview. Fernanda Pivano rewarded the gamble by giving Pironti her preface to the book, and Pironti himself, years later, published Pivano's book, 'After Hemingway,' a series of essays on North American literature of the Roaring Twenties, accompanied by a biography—including photographs—of the famous writer and translator. Among Italian authors, Pironti published journalist Joe Marrazzo's celebrated book, 'The Camorrista,' about Raffaele Cutolo, which was adapted into a successful film.
Always on Pall Mall, tough look, a past as a boxer (50 fights, a call-up to the Italian Welterweight Boxing National Team and a biographical book 'Tra libri e pugno' written by the journalist Carratelli) Pironti was an institution in via Port'Alba, a stone's throw from Piazza Dante in Naples, where his historic bookshop stood.
When a journalist from La Stampa interviewed him a few years ago and asked him if he had already chosen a suitable death, he replied: “By the way, Thomas Mann always comes to mind: ‘We are always thinking about death, but when it comes I already know I will say: 'is that all?'”.
