Language That Lives: How to Translate an Italian Master

When it comes to the pleasures of reading, there is no such thing as growing up. Or at least certain works of literature make it tempting to think so—as if there were always the same young reader buried inside us, one who comes back to life each time we lose ourselves in the beauty and mystery of a good book. For me, ’s is one such book. When I read it for the first time, I relived a mix of excitement and suspense, of elation and tension and horror that I thought had ended with the books and stories of my childhood. Having found the novel so enjoyable and gripping, and its world so thoroughly immersive, I wanted to recreate that experience and that world as fully as possible for anglophone readers. What I mean, essentially, is that I wanted this translation to as a book in English, and remain, like Mari’s original—for which I’ll use the Italian title of going forward—a unique celebration of language and an utterly absorbing mystery. Conversely, what I did not want it to be was a series of humorless footnotes, of arrows pointing to the , while asking readers to imagine for themselves linguistic dynamics that weren’t actually recreated by the translation. It’s therefore worth detailing how I approached the two central linguistic elements that pull the reader into this rabbit hole of a novel, and which can be divided into