Essays

Little Scenes of Rhodes

Conversations between Stella Levi and Isabelle Levy The Department Store of Salomon Alhadeff The Department Store of Salomon Alhadeff was founded in the mid-1800s. It was the biggest department store…

Periodic Words: Stranger

Periodic Words: Stranger In the Preface to If This Is A Man, Levi warns the reader about some possible consequences of organized political systems: “Many people—many nations—, can find themselves…

Year End

“If this has happened, it can happen again, when all the conditions necessary to trigger the mechanism are in place once again.” Primo Levi   From its inception, Printed Matter has…

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…

Filo-So-Fare

The resurgence of the Italian silk tallit. Alessandro Cassin in conversation with Rav Umberto Piperno Many of us remember well the years Rav Umberto Piperno spent in New York: his…

Being a Centaur

What follows is Alessandro Di Rocco’s acceptance speech of the Centaur Award 2018.I want to thank all of you for being here tonight. I am honored and humbled by this tribute.