Guido Mina di Sospiro is a novelist, essayist, and author of narrative nonfiction.
Early life and education
Guido Mina di Sospiro was born in
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
,
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, into an ancient Italian family, which relocated to Italy three months after his birth. He was raised in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
, and has been living in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
since the 1980s, currently near
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
He was educated at the
University of Pavia
The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...
, and later at the USC School of Cinema-Television, now known as
USC School of Cinematic Arts
The University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) houses seven academic divisions: Film & Television Production; Cinema & Media Studies; John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts; John Wells Division of Writing for Sc ...
, at
The University of Southern California
, mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it"
, religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist
, established =
, accreditation = WSCUC
, type = Private research university
, academic_affiliations =
, endowment = $8.1 ...
.
Writing career
Mina di Sospiro began as a music critic, by writing for ''Ritmo'', Italy's oldest jazz periodical (1945), and then, as a correspondent from Los Angeles, for the music and cinema magazines ''Tutti Frutti'' and ''Elaste'', respectively Italian and German. While still living in Italy, he wrote and directed the feature film ''Heroes and Villains'', first shown at the
Cineteca Italiana
Cineteca Italiana is a private film archive located in Milan, Italy, established in 1947, and as a foundation in 1996.
History
Established in 1947, and as a foundation in 1996, the Cineteca Italiana houses over 20,000 films and more than 100,000 ...
(Italian Cinémathèque), in Milan, in 1979; in Los Angeles, he wrote and directed the short film ''If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'D Do It All Over You'', which premiered at the 32nd Berlin Film Festival, in 1982.
The Story of Yew
Mina di Sospiro's novel ''The Story of Yew'', the memoirs of a two-thousand-year-old female yew tree, was inspired by the yew that grows in the cloister of
Muckross Abbey
Muckross Abbey (Irish: ''Mainistir Locha Léin'' and ''Mainistir Mhucrois'') is one of the major ecclesiastical sites, found in the Killarney National Park, County Kerry, Ireland. It was founded in 1448 as a Franciscan friary for the Observa ...
, near Killarney, in Ireland. Botanist and dendrologist
Alan Mitchell opined that "As a blend of science and imaginative fiction, this is a remarkable book, far removed from 'science-fiction' as normally understood. It deals with the real world in an inventive way without putting a foot wrong.
The book has been translated into many languages, as has ''From the River'', the memoirs of a mighty river.
The Forbidden Book
Mina di Sospiro has co-authored ''The Forbidden Book''
with
Joscelyn Godwin
Joscelyn Godwin (born 16 January 1945 at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England) is a composer, musicologist, and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism, and music in the occult.
Biography
He was educated as a chorister at Chris ...
, the noted scholar of western esoteric tradition. The novel deals with the incendiary reality of radical Islamic terrorism, with an attack first on Italian and then on Spanish soil, while trying to analyze, and then put to use by harnessing its alleged powers, a real book of 1603, written by Cesare Della Riviera, entitled ''Il Mondo magico de gli heroi'' (The Magical World of the Heroes). It is a very mysterious treatise of alchemy that supposedly teaches how to attain the Tree of Life and make a man into a god. In the novel, the Riviera family possesses a secret, annotated edition that gives specific instructions on magical techniques and sexual alchemy.
The Metaphysics of Ping-Pong
On his own, the author has published''The Metaphysics of Ping-Pong'' in 2013, of which ''Publishers Weekly'' states that it "can constitute a perfect introduction to the vast history of humankind's quest for philosophical clarity".
Leeward and Windward
A romance of the high seas that toys with the tropes of conventional fiction as a pretext for a daring alchemical exploration of the ''coniunctio oppositorum''. Philosopher
Maurizio Ferraris
Maurizio Ferraris (born 7 February 1956, in Turin) is an Italian continental philosopher and scholar, whose name is associated especially with the philosophical current named "new realism"—Ferraris wrote the ''Manifesto of New Realism'' in 201 ...
has likened it to Voltaire's
Candide
( , ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled ''Candide: or, All for the Best'' (1759); ''Candide: or, The ...
. In its Italian edition as ''Sottovento e sopravvento'' the novel has garnered rave reviews.
Forbidden Fruits
The second occult novel co-authored with
Joscelyn Godwin
Joscelyn Godwin (born 16 January 1945 at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England) is a composer, musicologist, and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism, and music in the occult.
Biography
He was educated as a chorister at Chris ...
. In
Dennis McKenna
Dennis Jon McKenna (born December 17, 1950 in Paonia, Colorado) is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He is the brother of well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna and is a founding board ...
's words: "A wild tale of adventure and intrigue involving a 20,000 year old secret entheogen sequestered in a golden pomegranate, recovered from the ocean depths off the coast of Malta. The discovery quickly spins off into a fast-paced story, weaving together ancient rites, secret cults, alchemical transformations, shamanic shenanigans, and ruthless, very bad people."
"Forbidden Fruits: An Occult Novel"
/ref>
Magazines
He contributes to the web magazine Reality Sandwich to the literary magazine and journal of cultural criticism New English Review, to ''New Dawn Magazine'', to the independent Italian online newspaper ''Linkiesta'' and to the "adventurous" literary web magazine Pangea.
Translations
His books have been translated into Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Turkish.
References
External links
Author's official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mina di Sospiro, Guido
Mina di Sospiro
Living people
Writers from Milan
University of Pavia alumni
USC School of Cinematic Arts alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
Italian emigrants to the United States