Otello Cavara

Born in Suzzara in 1877 and died in Milan in 1928, Otello Cavara was an Italian journalist. He worked for Il Tempo and Corriere della Sera around the turn of the 20th century, building a career in reporting before the First World War.

During World War I, he served as a pilot of combat aircraft. That unusual mix of reporter and aviator gave his best-known work, Voli di guerra: impressioni di un giornalista pilota, its special character: practical, observant, and shaped by direct experience.

Cavara is remembered less as a novelist than as a witness to a dramatic moment in modern history. His writing offers a rare view of the early age of flight through the eyes of someone who both lived it and knew how to tell the story clearly.