Nobel Prize winner, Luigi Pirandello was born in 1867 in Girgenti (now Agrigento) in Sicily. He became an internationally renowned playwright, novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. His fictional and theoretical work was deeply influenced by recurrent themes, such as the juxtaposition of life and form, the sharp distinction of the comic from the humorous, and the illusion of reality. His love for his native Sicilian dialect also frequently returned in his poetic, fictional, and theoretical works. Pirandello died in 1936.