Lucio Magri (1932—2011)
It is our sad duty to announce the passing of Lucio Magri, one of the foremost Italian left-wing intellectuals. A member of the Italian Communist Party from the mid 1950s, Magri was expelled in 1969 along with the group of dissidents who had established the journal il manifesto. In the ensuing decades, he was active in the Independent Left and the peace movement. After the disbandment of the PCI in 1991, Magri joined the Rifondazione Comunista party and acted as the editor of La rivista del Manifesto. In the words of Simonetta Fiori, Magri was "a great chess-player, a talented skier, and a generous politician", who remained "clear-headed and rational, until the end." Verso has recently translated to English his last book and political testament, The Tailor of Ulm: Communism in the Twentieth Century. A first extract from the book was published in 2008 in New Left Review.