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Italy

A portrait of writer Edvige Giunta
Photo © Joshua Fausty
The City and the Writer: In Gela, Sicily, with Edvige Giunta
By Nathalie Handal
In the final installment of the special Sicily series of the City and the Writer, Edvige Giunta talks with Nathalie Handal about environmental destruction and the many layers of history—literary and otherwise—in Gela.
A portrait of writer Giusy Sciacca.
Photo credit: Marcello Bianca.
The City and the Writer: In Siracusa with Giusy Sciacca
By Nathalie Handal
Literature and, inevitably, theater, have belonged to Siracusa since its Greek colonization.
Portrait of writer Roberto Alajmo in front of a stone wall
The City and the Writer: In Palermo with Roberto Alajmo
By Nathalie Handal
Palermo moves a lot but hardly budges.
Translated from Italian by the author
Multimedia
Black and white portrait of writer Maria Borio
The City and the Writer: In Assisi with Maria Borio
By Nathalie Handal
In this corner of Europe, so many places have a humanist significance that’s truly contemporary, made of beauty and nature, in harmony with global change.
Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
Portrait of author Claudia Durastanti
Photo: Civitella Ranieri Foundation
The City and the Writer: In Rome with Claudia Durastanti
By Nathalie Handal
It must be an effect of the light, but Rome can be a maze . . .
The covers of the books featured in the list
The Best Books of 2022—And What We’re Looking Forward to in 2023
By Words Without Borders
Our staff, contributors, and board members share their favorite translated books of the year and the titles they're looking forward to in 2023.
The covers of the books featured in the list
World Kid Lit: The Best of 2022
By Jackie Friedman Mighdoll, Johanna McCalmont & Claire Storey
Join the editors of the World Kid Lit blog on a tour of their favorite international children's books of 2022, from picture books to YA fiction and graphic novels.
The covers of all the books featured in the list
12 Global Children’s Books for History Lovers
By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
In celebration of #WorldKidLitMonth, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp recommends 12 international books for young readers with an interest in world history.
Portrait of writer Moira Egan
Photo copyright © Eric Toccaceli
The City and the Writer: In Rome with Moira Egan
By Nathalie Handal
The way the sunset sometimes Tiepolos the clouds.
A silver Vespa parked on a cobblestone road
Photo by Enrico Carnemolla on Unsplash
Uncle Andrea
By Antonio Calgan
Hypocrite that I am, I never acknowledged my true self out of cowardice, out of fear of being misunderstood, and, more than anything else, because I thought if they knew what I was, they’d despise me.
Translated from Italian by Wendell Ricketts
May-2022-In-Praise-of-Echo-Jhumpa-Lahiri-Echo-Flying-from-Narcissus-Guy-Head-Feature
"Echo Flying from Narcissus" by Guy Head. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In Praise of Echo
By Jhumpa Lahiri
We must be careful not to equate the word echo with simple repetition, and it speaks to me personally, acutely, about what it means to shift from writer to translator and back again.
A silhouette of a man looking at his phone
Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash
Seventh Scene
By Maria Borio
In the third scene we talk / motionless across a screen in the ether
Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
March-2022-Elena-Rigby-Beatlemania-Neapolitan-The-Shampoo-Album-Cover
Cover for The Shampoo's album In Naples.
Elena Rigby
By Peppe Fiore
The microphones of Radio Antenna Capri are rapt witnesses to a minor page of modern history—even if the chapter of history in question is the saga of the Neapolitan gasconade, not the annals of the pop beat.
Translated from Italian by Antony Shugaar
A baby doll sits by a window
Photo by Jay Mistry on Unsplash
The Lost Translator
By Michael F. Moore
It is all the more disturbing, then, that neither Gyllenhaal in her interviews nor the film’s end credits or press kit makes any mention of the translator whose work was the basis for the script: Ann Goldstein.
Soumaila Sacko: Story of the Good Life
By Djarah Kan
But if you drink and breathe and sweat and love in a country that is no longer yours, then you are not a migrant. You are a man.
Translated from Italian by Candice Whitney
Double portrait of writer Jhumpa Lahiri
Where I Find Myself
By Jhumpa Lahiri
I have come to think of any “definitive text” largely the same way that I think of a mother tongue, at least in my case: an inherently debatable, perpetually relative concept.
Global Blackness: Black Writers in Translation
By Eric M. B. Becker
Engaging the evolving dialogue that broadens definitions of global Blackness.
Portrait of writer Angelo Cannavacciuolo
The City and the Writer: In Naples with Angelo Cannavacciuolo
By Nathalie Handal
Naples is the city of a hundred cities, of a hundred satellites all orbiting the unique, massive planet that is memory.
Translated by Alta L. Price
Multimedia
[When I was born my mother]
By Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto
I practiced the art of clairvoyance, / became a sorceress, a witch, a woman
Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
Multilingual
From the Red Desert
By Maria Borio
I write to you from the red zone.
Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
Multilingual
Deceptive Simplicity: International Children’s Literature
By Daniel Hahn
I often feel that adults forget what children’s stories are capable of.
Farfariel: The Book of Micù
By Pietro Albì
“The Devil at your service!” it announced in perfect Italian.
Translated from Italian by Denise Muir
The Desire to Travel Responsibly Must Come before the Desire to Learn through Literature
By Tomaso Biancardi
There is a surer way for international literature to make us better tourists.
Road Stories: International Writing on Travel
By Susan Harris
Some of the writers here document their own trips, while others invent characters and send them on the road.
The Queer “I”: The Tenth Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
All the pieces are told in the first person, lending intimacy and immediacy to the events they describe.
The Lost Language of Crane Operators
By Matteo B. Bianchi
Perhaps I’m not ready yet to plan out my entire future, but right now these are the arms I need around me.
Translated from Italian by Wendell Ricketts
Italian Speculative Microfiction in Translation: Three Writers
By Rachel Cordasco
Speculative fiction is alive and well in Italy.
Translated from Italian
Microverses
By Simonetta Olivo
He still loves her, so he complies. He runs the simulation all over again.
Translated from Italian by Sarah Jane Webb
AIwakening and AIdolon
By Francesco Verso
They’ve taken care of the medical expenses ever since “posthumous” became synonymous with “posthuman.”
Translated from Italian by Sarah Jane Webb
MultimediaMultilingual
Bea’s Egg and Esmeralda in Bloom
By Emanuela Valentini
Inside it floated a tiny infant, in every way like a human being, except for its minuscule, as yet featherless, wings.
Translated from Italian by Sarah Jane Webb
Past, Future, Present: International Graphic Novels, Volume XII
By Susan Harris
Though much of the art here may be in black and white, the topics addressed are anything but.
Spit Three Times
By Davide Reviati
They're not made to live in houses like we are.
Translated by Jamie Richards
That Deep Ocean…
By Ana Candida de Carvalho Carneiro
This month, we bring you the first of three winning entries in the Words without Borders - Play for Voices Radio Drama Contest.
Translated from Italian by Stephen Pidcock
People Behaving Badly
By Susan Harris
Many greet the clean slate of a new year by pledging to chalk up only virtue and moderation.
The Betrayal
By Giuseppe Berto
So You said to me, “What you are about to do, do quickly.”
Translated from Italian by Gregory Conti
There Is No Map: The New Italian(s)
By Alta L. Price
Who is Italian, what is the Italian language, and who deserves to write in it?
Barbie
By Gabriella Kuruvilla
He was fascinated with India: I represented its Italian branch, easily accessible.
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
Multilingual
Two Untitled Prose Poems
By Giampiero Neri
Exile is accompanied by the idea of solitude.
Translated from Italian by Martha Cooley and Antonio Romani
From “Goldfish Don’t Live in Puddles”
By Marco Truzzi
“Trailers aren’t usually known to speak.”
Translated from Italian by André Naffis-Sahely
Multilingual
Three Poems from “Tattoos”
By Eva Taylor
on the atlas of my skin / your names
Translated from Italian by Olivia E. Sears
Multilingual
From “Lampedusa Snow”
By Lina Prosa
I stand like an African at the door of an entrance / that doesn’t exist.
Translated from Italian by Nerina Cocchi
Cous Cous Klan
By Tahar Lamri
I leave to my parents their portable country, so magnificent in their memory and in the stories they tell.
Translated from Italian by Robert Elliot
I am leaving you Europe
By Gëzim Hajdari
Your ruins no longer enchant me.
Translated from Italian by Patrick Barron
MultimediaMultilingual
Italy and the Literature of Immigration
By Francesco Durante
Why has the memory of this body of literature been so appallingly suppressed in Italy?
Translated from Italian by Antony Shugaar
The True Story of “Faccetta Nera”
By Igiaba Scego
A black woman, in the regime’s view, simply could not be an Italian.
Translated from Italian by Antony Shugaar
Graphic Novels at WWB: The First Ten Years
By Susan Harris
The narrative threads that weave through the last ten years tell a tale in themselves.
Landscape
By Antonella Anedda
I neared a branch heavy with snow / bending under the grip of one of the crows.
Translated from Italian by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
Future
By Antonella Anedda
Only a sign like a silent hiss remains from that time
Translated from Italian by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
From Watering the Plant of Dreaming (Dialogue with Paul Celan)
By Elisa Biagini
Nights close / inside / my palm, / I touch you / and you are ink.
Translated from Italian by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
From “Senza Polvere Senza Peso”
By Mariangela Gualtieri
Thus the world is all coal and ashes. / My pots and pans don’t feed the hungry.
Translated from Italian by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
Multilingual
The World’s Bloom: Three Italian Poets
By Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
These poets are surrounded by a poetic tradition that has often regarded style and illusion as essential ends; consequently, they harness the suggestiveness and sensuousness of the Italian language in simultaneously familiar and original terms.
Pansies
By Giancarlo Pastore
I’d never found the plant or flower that could serve as punctuation.
Translated from Italian by Wendell Ricketts
Fun
By Paolo Bacilieri
In hindsight, it couldn't have happened anywhere but here.
Translated by Jamie Richards
A Human Act
By Manfredi Giffone, Fabrizio Longo & Alessandro Parodi
For very important murders, the consent of the commission is required.
Translated by Adrian Nathan West
Scandal
By Aldo Nove
The father could no longer tolerate the oddities of that son who was turning him into the laughingstock of Assisi.
Translated from Italian by Elizabeth Harris
from “You Don’t Know: A Mafia Dictionary”
By Andrea Camilleri
When it comes to adultery, however, sometimes you have to turn a blind eye.
Translated from Italian by Elizabeth Harris
from “Morti di Sonno”
By Davide Reviati
“If one of those things explodes, the city’ll blow up too.”
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
I Remember
By Gabriella Ghermandi
You always talked about Crevalcore when it rained.
Translated from Italian by Victoria Offredi Poletto & Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi
Multilingual
The World Between: Writing from Ethiopia and Italy
By Maaza Mengiste
I come from a country with close to ninety languages.
from “Etenesh”
By Paolo Castaldi
“When we get to Tripoli, you're on your own.”
Translated from Italian by Maaza Mengiste