Simonetta Wenkert was born in London in 1965 of Italian-Austrian parents. After graduating from Durham University, she translated A Cercar La Bella Morte (In Search of a Glorious Death) by Carlo Mazzantini which was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award. Simonetta has lived in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem and has worked as a teacher and a translator of film scripts. She currently lives in London with her husband and three children. The Sunlit Stage is her first novel.

'She vividly conjures up the sights and smells of a foreign landscape. Those who have enjoyed Michele Roberts' sensuous accounts of gender, history and nationhood will find much to admire in this promising intergenerational saga' Daily Mail 'Persuasive, moving, sympathetic. This is a novel intelligently conceived and written with feeling ... It's hard to suppose that a better first novel will appear this year' Allan Massie, Scotsman 'Intriguing and absorbing' Instyle 'I really enjoyed it: it captures all the passion, fear and terror of Italy in the dangerous 1970s' Santa Montefiore

Simonetta Wenkert was born in London in 1965 of Italian-Austrian parents. After graduating from Durham University, she translated A Cercar La Bella Morte (In Search of a Glorious Death) by Carlo Mazzantini which was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award. Simonetta has lived in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem and has worked as a teacher and a translator of film scripts. She currently lives in London with her husband and three children. The Sunlit Stage is her first novel.

'She vividly conjures up the sights and smells of a foreign landscape. Those who have enjoyed Michele Roberts' sensuous accounts of gender, history and nationhood will find much to admire in this promising intergenerational saga' Daily Mail 'Persuasive, moving, sympathetic. This is a novel intelligently conceived and written with feeling ... It's hard to suppose that a better first novel will appear this year' Allan Massie, Scotsman 'Intriguing and absorbing' Instyle 'I really enjoyed it: it captures all the passion, fear and terror of Italy in the dangerous 1970s' Santa Montefiore

Simonetta Wenkert was born in London in 1965 of Italian-Austrian parents. After graduating from Durham University, she translated A Cercar La Bella Morte (In Search of a Glorious Death) by Carlo Mazzantini which was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award. Simonetta has lived in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem and has worked as a teacher and a translator of film scripts. She currently lives in London with her husband and three children. The Sunlit Stage is her first novel.

'She vividly conjures up the sights and smells of a foreign landscape. Those who have enjoyed Michele Roberts' sensuous accounts of gender, history and nationhood will find much to admire in this promising intergenerational saga' Daily Mail 'Persuasive, moving, sympathetic. This is a novel intelligently conceived and written with feeling ... It's hard to suppose that a better first novel will appear this year' Allan Massie, Scotsman 'Intriguing and absorbing' Instyle 'I really enjoyed it: it captures all the passion, fear and terror of Italy in the dangerous 1970s' Santa Montefiore