The language that lived twice
— Though, we usually don’t review books available only in Italian, in this case, the approach to a familiar subject is so remarkably fresh that I trust will interest our…
Books
Primo Levi at 100
Primo Levi’s 100th anniversary will be celebrated around the world through lectures, book presentations, staged readings, and academic seminars. Drawing on its ongoing effort to offer a platform to new…
Diario Ottuso
“Lyric prose is a way to enter the market: a parcel of prose is a lost continent” Amelia Rosselli The growing interest in Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996), one of Italy’s…
Publishing and Culture: The Alchemy of Ideas
Since the days of Gutenberg and probably long before, publishers have depended on what was most popular, and therefore profitable, for their existence. From breathless, half-imagined travelogues to more salacious…
Translating Giorgio Bassani
The work of relatively few Italian novelists from the 20th Century has so far been translated more than once, but only Giorgio Bassani’s —in part or in its entirety— has…
New Book Explores America’s Flirt With Italian Fascism
Mauro Canali’s La scoperta dell’Italia examines the activity, impact, and perspectives of American correspondents in Italy from 1900 to 1945 and the beginnings of the modern tradition of international political…
The Year of History, A Novel
When Elsa Morante published La Storia. Romanzo in 1974 it was a watershed event that invested Italian society both in terms of the unprecedented success among readers and the ideologically…
Corrado Cagli, the American Years
In the 1930’s the young Italian artist, Corrado Cagli was a rising star of the Scuola Romana, supported by the Fascist regime despite being both Jewish and a homosexual. Following…
Nuto Revelli: the History of the Present
It is a rare pleasure to turn the last page of a book, and remain in a state of bewilderment with the feeling of having traveled a road previously unknown….
Survival and Holocaust Historiography
Liliana Picciotto’s new book, Salvarsi (Einaudi 2017), stems from a research project she lead for the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan, and represents a radical innovation in Holocaust…