What can literature teach us about compassion?

Rosita Steenbeek studied classical languages, theology and modern literature at the University of Amsterdam. She then moved to Rome, where she settled and became friends with Alberto Moravia, Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni. She wrote articles for among others Vrij Nederland and translated books from Italian by Alberto Moravia and Susanna Tamaro.

In 1994, she made her debut with The Last Woman, a book set in Rome and Sicily, which was translated into several languages. Her debut was followed by many novels, such as Realm of Shadows, which is set in the world of the Etruscans, the Venice novel Ballets Russes, Other Light about a seventeenth-century painter. In 2022, she published the historical novel Julia, Free Emperor’s Daughter, about the only child of Emperor Augustus. She also wrote novels not set in Italy such as Intensive Care and Rose, a family in time of war, about the fortunes of her Jewish family on her mother’s side before and during WWII.

Her oeuvre is multifaceted. Its trademarks are visual power, strong dialogues and evocation of atmosphere. It is infused with compassion for her characters.

She also writes on refugee issues. In 2017, she published her essay on compassion Love Your Enemies. This was followed by Who Is My Neighbour? and Dreamland Italy, from Aleppo to Turin. She collaborated on the television series Viva l’Umanità! about refugees and Europe.

In Love Your Enemies, the author explains what compassion means to her and describes what compassion looks like through a trip to Lampedusa, the Italian island in the Mediterranean where tens of thousands of refugees arrived by boat in recent years. She also spent several weeks in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Steenbeek herself inherited compassion from childhood. Her parents both grew up in a ministerial family and passed on to her the Christian culture of paying attention to and being good to those around you.