Simonetta agnello hornby biography of martin

Italian novelist and food writer

Simonetta Agnello Hornby is an Italian novelist and food writer. Her novels are international bestsellers, translated into more than twenty languages.

Biography

Born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1945, Simonetta Agnello Hornby has spent most of her adult life in England where she worked as a solicitor for a community legal aid firm specialized in domestic violence that she co-founded in 1979. She has been lecturing for many years, and was a part-time judge at the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal for eight years.

Her debut novel La Mennulara (The Almond Picker) was published in Italy in 2002 by Feltrinelli, and was awarded the Forte Village Literary Prize, The Stresa Prize for Fiction, and the "Alassio 100 Libri - An Author for Europe" Prize in 2003. Translated into more than ten languages, it became an international bestseller.

In the following decade, Simonetta Agnello Hornby wrote six more novels: La zia Marchesa (The Marchesa), Boccamurata, Vento Scomposto, La Monaca (The Nun, winner of the Italian Pen Prize), and Il veleno dell'Oleandro. She has also published memoirs (Via XX settembre, La mia Londra), a collection of short stories (Il male che si deve raccontare), books of recipes and etiquette Un filo d'olio, La cucina del buon gusto). Her last book, Il pranzo di Mosè, was published in Italy in 2014. She lives in London.

She was awarded the Order of the Star of Italy in the rank of Grand Officer by the President of Italy on 2 June 2016.

She married Martin Hornby. They have two sons, George and Nicholas.

Works translated into English

Novels:

References

Simonetta Agnello Hornby was born in Palermo and has spent most of her working life in London where she works as a lawyer. Her first novel, La mennulara(The Almond Picker) was greatly acclaimed and has been translated into many languages. It was awarded the Forte Village Literary Prize, the Stresa Prize for Fiction and the Alassio Prize. She has had continued success with other novels including her most recent work to be translated into English, La monaca (The Nun).

      What brought you to London and drove you to specialise in your particular field of law?
I fell in love with an Englishman whom I met in Cambridge when I was learning English as a foreign language at 17 and then married him. I lived in America, in Zambia, in Oxford and then in London in 1972. I obtained a doctorate in jurisprudence in Sicily and when I returned to England I had already worked in lawyers’ offices in Zambia. I had to train to become an English solicitor and I did so while I was having my children. I worked in the City which I loved greatly, but the pressures in those days on married women with children were huge and in order to have success I would have had to put the children in boarding school and I didn’t want to do this. So, I looked for a job locally. There was one in Brixton, the London Borough of Lambeth, as a Child Care Solicitor. I worked for them for two years. I then set up my own business as Hornby and Levy, with a partner who is now Judge Marcia Levy.

Given your other commitments, why did you feel compelled to put pen to paper?
I’m very happy to be a lawyer. Of my two jobs, the one of a lawyer is more enjoyable to be honest, and more useful than being a writer. There are lots of good writers around and if I disappeared my readers would be sad for a while, but would comfort themselves extremely well. I set up my law firm and then carried it on alone, because Marcia, my partner,

Simonetta Agnello was born in Palermo in 1945 to titled parents on both her father’s and her mother’s sides. As a girl, she spent what she has called a “feudal” but very happy childhood on her parents’ estate in the Sicilian countryside near Agrigento. After being tutored privately at home, she moved to Palermo to attend school. In the city, she led what might, to some, seem an anachronistically sheltered life. But the years she spent in Palermo as a treasured member of an extended and colorful family were rich with important emotional and intellectual experiences.

In 1963, Simonetta Agnello travelled to the United Kingdom to study English at Cambridge University. During her stay in England, she met Martin Hornby, her future husband. In 1965, she was a Fulbright scholar at the

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Citation: Klopp, Charles. "Simonetta Agnello Hornby". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 March 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13704, accessed 21 February 2025.]