Serafino is a typical Pirandellian anti-hero, a spectator rather than a participant in the tragi-comedy of human existence. Indeed he has the perfect job for it, that of a film cameraman. Serafino is an observer, an impersonal tool of a new industry based on make-believe. All he has to do is turn the handle of his camera and watch. He has no part in what is going on and is so removed from life that the mauling of an actor by a tiger cannot deflect him from filming the action. The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio is set in Rome circa 1915, partly on a film set, partly in the city.

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)was born in Sicily in a prosperous middle-class family. After studying at Palermo, Rome and Bonn universities he devoted himself to literary pursuits and published, poetry, short stories, a novel and plays. The bankruptcy of his father in 1903 drastically altered his life. His wife became ill both mentally and physically and he contemplated committing suicide. It is against this background that he wrote The Late Mattia Pascal in 1904 which is seen as the beginning of all that is most interesting in his work. It was an immediate success in Italy and abroad and helped him become a well-known literary figure. Now best known for plays like Six Characters in Search of an Author he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934. His vast output of novels and short stories contain the ideas that surface in his plays.