Vincenzo Consolo (18 February 1933 – 21 January 2012) was an Italian writer. Consolo was born in Sant'Agata di Militello, but resided in Milan from 1969 until his death. He began his literary career in 1963, but gained wider attention in 1976 with Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (The Smile of the Unknown Mariner) and went on to become an award-winning author. In 2008 he was in Lisbon for a conference at Istituto Italiano di Cultura, where he met with the Portuguese poet Casimiro de Brito and Anna Luisa Pignatelli and wrote a comment on her novel "Nero Toscano". Awards