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Donna Leon, born in New York to an Irish-Spanish family, first visited Italy in 1965 as a student and visited there regularly for the next ten years while working at the same time as an English teacher in the US, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia. She calls herself a person without ambition and says that her only desire has always been to live an entertaining and pleasant life. For over 15 years she moved from continent to continent and finally decided to settle down in Venice. She found a job with the University of Maryland that co-operated with American military bases in Veneto (Euganean Venice), which allowed her to live like an Italian while still using her native English at work.
It was by chance that in 1992 she sent a book she had written to a competition in Japan. She won first prize and signed a contract for two more books. Such was the beginning of a series of twelve novels about Commissioner Guido Brunetti. Her novels have all been highly acclaimed, including, most recently 'Friends in High Places', which won the 'Crime Writers' Association Macallan Silver Dagger award for Fiction.
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