Title: Hollow Heart Author: Viola Di Grado Translator: Antony Shugaar / Italian Publisher: Europa Editions, New York (2015) ISBN: 978 1 60945 271 1 “I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another.” ― John Lennon “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where … Continue reading Hollow Heart by Viola Di Grado, tr. Antony Shugaar
Title: The Pope’s Daughter Author: Dario Fo Translator: Antony Shugaar Publisher: Europa Editions, New York (2015) ISBN: 978 1 60945 274 2 Dario Fo – playwright, comedian, Nobel Laureate – is an admirer of the 16th century form of street theater known as commedia dell’arte. These roving theatrical troupes employed masks, improvisation, wordplay and slapstick comedy to entertain the masses. The actors and actresses performed broad … Continue reading The Pope’s Daughter by Dario Fo (Antony Shugaar, translator)
This Is the Garden opens with an excerpt from a poem by Claudio Damiani – This is the garden; when you look it’s far too bright and burns your eyes and so you turn away, although you know that everything is real, everything you see is real, and through time life unwinds and is complete . . . Those words sum up this collection of … Continue reading This Is the Garden by Giulio Mozzi, translated from Italian by Elizabeth Harris
From the opening pages of his newest book one gets the feeling that Umberto Eco wanted to create his own version of The Da Vinci Code. Like that novel The Prague Cemetery is compulsively readable. The prose is wonderfully playful – Eco at his best. It dances along while pulling readers happily behind… almost against their will. Because Eco isn’t writing about the Knights Templar … Continue reading The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (translated from the original Italian by Richard Dixon)
The extended title of Fabio Geda’s novel In the Sea There Are Crocodiles is Based on the True Story of Enaiatollah Akbari. Geda explains in his introduction – the events are true, but because “Enaiatollah didn’t remember it all perfectly… this book must be considered fiction, since it is a recreation of Enaiatollah’s experience – a recreation that has allowed him to take possession of his … Continue reading In the Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda (translated from Italian by Howard Curtis)
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