Prolific and highly successful, Elsa Morante distinguished herself as a novelist, short story writer, and poet. The Marxist critic Gyorgy Lukacs hailed Morante's early House of the Liars (1948) as "the greatest modern Italian novel," but it was Arthur's Island (1957) that brought her international fame and an independent income. Her great financial triumph was, however, History (1974), which was the first Italian novel to be marketed with high-pressure promotional advertising, making use of publisher, mass media, and political party resources to push sales up to 600,000 copies in less than six months. Morante married Alberto Moravia in 1941, and they separated in 1962.
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