Silvana De Mari is an Italian doctor and children's writer known in the English-speaking world for The Last Dragon, an award-winning fantasy novel published in English in 2006. As of 2014 it remains the only one of her many books to be translated into English.
Silvana De Mari was born in 1953 in Caserta, Italy. She lives in Turin with her family. She is a writer, psychotherapist, and doctor. She formerly worked as a surgeon in both Italy and Ethiopia, before setting up a private psychotherapy practice in Turin.
L'ultimo Elfo was her third children's book and the first to be translated into English. It has also been translated into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and several other languages. Both L'ultimo Elfo and its sequel L'ultimo Orco received multiple awards, but the author considers her most important book to be Il Gatto dagli Occhi d'Oro , published in Italy in 2009.
