ALDA MERINI (Milan 1931 - 2009) is one of the most famous Italian poets of our times. She has received awards like the Librex-Guggenheim for poetry (1996) and that of the Premiership (1999). The Easy Life was first published in 1996 by Bompiani.

‘Merini’s astounding ability of mixing up words obscure in appearance with concrete feelings, devilish images with heavenly passages, defeats evil (that of the mind too) and gives back to us, on the page, where any sense of logic seems gone, the meaning of life’ – Maurizio Bonassina, ‘The World of Alda Merini, Neither Prose, Nor Poetry’, Il Corriere della Sera.'The Easy Life collects in alphabetical order the impressions of a lifetime, that span from her experience in the asylum to her proverbial joie de vivre, from the fiery passion of love to old age, from the ECTs to the loneliness of her house in Milan. Abandoning the poetic verse that had made her so famous for a sincere and ruthless poetic prose constituted of short, brilliant aphorisms, Alda Merini delivers to these pages something that is more than a testament: a true day of reckoning, where she confronts face to face her entire existence.' - Affari Italiani (Italian Affairs) [website]