PITIGRILLI

PITIGRILLI (pen name of Dino Segre; 1893–1954), Italian author and journalist. After working on the staff of L'Epoca in Rome, Segre was a foreign correspondent in Istanbul and later founded two popular reviews, Le Grandi Firme and Il Dramma, in his native Turin. As Pitigrilli, he wrote novels and short stories which gained considerable notoriety in France as well as Italy for their erotic, often pornographic, themes and qualities, and their analysis, superficial though it was, of moral behavior. They include La cintura di castita (1921), La vergine a 18 carati (1924), I vegetariani dell'amore (1932), and Dolicocefala bionda (1936). During the Fascist era Pitigrilli became a police informer and, between 1934 and 1938, collaborated with the OVRA, Mussolini's secret police. As a result of these activities, he later had to seek refuge in Argentina. On his return to Italy after World War II, he ostentatiously embraced Catholicism and wrote anti-Jewish books such as Mosé e ilcavalier Levi (1948). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Zucáro (ed.), Lettere all' OVRA di Pitigrilli (1961).