Claudia Durastanti was born in Brooklyn in the eighties and grew up between the US and rural southern Italy. Her novel La Straniera was a finalist for the Premio Strega. The English translation Strangers I Know received a PEN award. She now lives in Rome, where she writes and translates, including the latest Italian edition of The Great Gatsby.

For Berlin Review, Claudia wrote about transfuge de classe narratives, the genre of literature where writers from poor backgrounds escape their circumstances and look back on their upbringings with a mix of shame, guilt and pride. You can read about why Claudia says this genre began booming just as the reality of upward mobility for working class people became out-of-reach.

Read her essay, “A Literature for the Downwardly Mobile,” at https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-06/durastanti-literature-for-the-downwardly-mobile

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