Posts filed under 'Strega Prize'

Weekly Dispatches from the Front Lines of World Literature

July 1, 2022  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Amaryllis Gacioppo, and Katarina Gadze

The latest in world literature from Italy, the Philippines, and Croatia!

This week, our editors on the ground are bringing you news of summer literary festivities, publishers fighting back against silence, gatherings of award-winning writers, translation exhibitions, and more! 

Amaryllis Gacioppo, Newsletter Editor, reporting from Italy

Italians are known for their ability to delight in la dolce vita, and this exuberance is never more evident than in the summer season, when the entire country throws itself into festivities. The Italian literary world is no exception: from June 9 to June 12, indie publisher festival Una marina di libri held its thirteenth edition in the massive open-air courtyard of Palermo’s Villa Filipina. Along with an indie book fair—which included publishers such as Edizioni E/O (Elena Ferrante’s Italian publisher), Iperborea (an Italian publisher specialised in translations of Northern European literature), La Nuova Frontiera (a Rome-based publisher focusing on Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese-language translations), and famed Palermitan publisher Sellerio—festival-goers were treated to poetry readings, music, wine, pizza, and magazine launches—such as that of Arabpop, a beguiling Italian magazine on its second issue, which is devoted to Arab art and literature. This year’s festival was dedicated to both Pier Paolo Pasolini and the thirty-year anniversary of the Capaci massacre (in which one of Palermo’s famed and beloved anti-mafia magistrates, Giovanni Falcone, was murdered by Cosa Nostra, along with his wife and three police escorts). One such event featured theatre and music students from Teatro Biondo and Palermo’s Conservatory giving music-accompanied dramatic readings of pieces by Pasolini, Giuliana Saladino, and Leonardo Sciascia at various times and locations around the festival. Others featured educational talks for young people about famous anti-mafia figures including Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (Falcone’s friend and fellow beloved magistrate, murdered with five police escorts by Cosa Nostra less than two months after Falcone), and the presentation of Pietro Grasso and Alessio Pasquini’s new book Il mio amico Giovanni, in which the former spoke about his friendship with Falcone.

In other news, the shortlist for Italy’s most prestigious prize for book-length fiction, the Strega Prize, was announced on June 8. Among the nominees are Marco Amerighi, for his second novel Randagi (Strays); Fabio Bacà for his second novel Nova; Alessandra Carati for her first novel E poi saremo salvi (And then we’ll be safe); prior Strega nominee Mario Desiati for Spatriati (Patriates); Veronica Galletta for her second novel Nina sull’argine (Nina on the riverbank); Claudio Piersanti for Quel maledetto Vronskij (That damn Vronkskij); and Veronica Raimo for Niente di vero (Nothing true). I found the nominees list to be exciting, with many up-and-coming writers unearthed, along with more established writers that have yet to be appreciated in the Anglophone world. With the exception of Desiati, Piersanti, and Raimo, most are relative newcomers on their first or second book, and—with the exception of the latter two—have yet to be translated into English. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: from SOFIA ALWAYS DRESSES IN BLACK by Paolo Cognetti

May 20, 2014  |  in Translations  |  by Antony Shugaar

Detergent plus fabric softener plus ironing and starch: a providential sedative that helped her to stop her sobbing in no more than thirty seconds.

TWO HORIZONTAL GIRLS

The little girl had taken all the postcards to bed with her. She called them the collection. They were scattered all over the sheets and wedged between the pillows, where she could line them up, arrange them in columns, switch them around, alphabetize them or put them into chronological order, or distribute them as if they were cities and towns and the mattress was one big map. The big girl, stretched out on the floor at the foot of the bed, had first explained to her that she couldn’t really refer to them as a collection, since they had all been sent by one correspondent, that is, her father, and then she’d done something far worse. With an enormous effort of the will, she’d reached up a hand from the linoleum-level where she lay to the bed-level, and she’d convinced the little girl to hand her the first three, four, or five postcards in the row. The room they were in was dominated by white. The walls were white, the sheets and pillowcases were white, the curtains on the windows were white, the gauze bandages on the little girl’s wrists were white. The big girl had laboriously opened her right eye, like a shipwrecked sailor blinded by that expanse of blinding white pack ice; then she’d checked the stamps and the postmarks and asked the little girl why on earth she thought the postcards had all come from the post office of East Verona, if each of them were marked with a different city: Amsterdam, Aosta, Athens, Bangkok, and Berlin. She had even been on the verge of explaining to the little girl that her father wasn’t an archeologist or an explorer, much less an agent working for the intelligence service, constantly moving around the world. Her father was quite simply just one more husband who had left his wife to start a new life, probably with a younger woman, somewhere in the greater Verona metropolitan area. Then the thought of family, any family at all, had triggered a surge of nausea, so instead all she’d said was: “Oh what the fuck do I care; as far as I’m concerned you can all just drop dead. I’m mustering my last ounce of strength to keep from vomiting.” READ MORE…