Daniele Vare

Daniele Varè was born in 1880, the son of an Italian nationalist exiled with Mazzini by the Austrian regime. Although he was brought up in Scotland where his parents met, he returned to Italy when he was still young and entered the country's diplomatic service. He served in Vienna, Geneva, Copenhagen and Luxembourg. However, his chief posting was in Peking where he served for twelve years from 1908. During his time there he saw the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the fall of the Last Emperor Pu Yi, the sweep of civil war and revolution, and the effects of foreign immigration in the form of First World War exiles. His experiences became the central subject matter of his fiction and non-fiction writing.

He left the diplomatic service in 1932 in order to devote himself to writing, publishing in both Italian and English.