The Look of this Heaven
By Laura GIACALONE
CHARLES H. TRAUB, DOLCE VIA: ITALY IN THE 1980S. DAMIANI, 2014.
Literature
Mapping Italian Contemporary Literature
By Laura GIACALONE
An exploration of Alessandro Baricco’s book the Barbarians – An Essay on the Mutation of Culture
Italian Fiction Into Screenplays
by Laura GIACALONE
The history of Italian literature has always been tightly intertwined with that of film. World-famous cinematic transpositions of literature masterpieces have left indelible marks on the collective imagination.
“It Lit” In Translation
by Laura GIACALONE
The perception of Italian culture abroad is mostly anchored to the country’s great artistic and literary heritage, to the extent that Italy is more clearly understood and celebrated for what it once was, than what it is now. If we restrict our field of observation to the book market, we can see how the authors translated and distributed abroad actually contribute to shaping the identity and perception of a given culture.
Director’s Backstory, Dark and Light
by Laura GIACALONE
If a maverick is, by his own admission, “a filmmaker who finds a way with the system of making the films he has chosen to make”, Martin Scorsese is certainly one. From his early works, directly emanating from the ethnic melting pot of New York’s Lower East Side where he grew up, to his latest Oscar-winning celebration of the dream factory, Hugo (2011), Scorsese has worked his way up in the film industry within and outside the system, “above ground” and “underground”, in and out of Hollywood, putting onto film his deepest obsessions.
What Grows in War-Ravaged Soil
by Laura GIACALONE
Reading Twice Born is like taking a journey that, once started, has no turning back. It is something to be experienced, more than just read. It slowly sinks into your heart and, page by page, leaves you completely helpless, defenceless, as after a storm of mixed emotions. It is like being revealed the unspoken truth of human condition, with its eternal carousel of joy and sorrow, and turning it into a personal memory.
New Italians: A murder set in a Roman palazzo reveals the surprising diversity of its neighbors
by Laura GIACALONE
A review of Amara Lakhous’ award-winning novel “Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio” (2006).
The Superficial Truth: A controversial video-turned-book looks at the one-dimensional presentation of women in Italian television
by Laura GIACALONE
Please don’t retouch my wrinkles” – said the great Italian actress Anna Magnani, a muse for Neorealist maestro Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City, 1945), while instructing her make-up artist not to conceal the lines on her face – “Leave them all there, it took me so long to earn them.” Many years have passed since then, and women’s concerns and ambitions seem to have changed a lot.
Primal Emotions: Author and physicist Paolo Giordano uses a mathematic principle as a metaphor for the human condition
by Laura GIACALONE
A man whose mind has gone astray should study mathematics,” said philosopher Francis Bacon, pointing out a strict relationship between mathematical thought and that kind of extraordinary, sometimes borderline, sensitivity that is commonly associated to poetry. That must be the case of Paolo Giordano, a 27-year-old Italian scientist working on a doctorate in particle physics, who has recently won five literary awards – included the prestigious Premio Strega, Italy’s answer to the Man Booker Prize – with his bestselling debut novel The Solitude of Prime Numbers.
Memories from a Lost World
by Laura GIACALONE
It happened almost by chance. A small Italian publisher handed me this little book called Paper Fish and told me to give it a read, to see if it was any good. The moment I opened the book I knew that something had happened inside of me. I was overwhelmed by a sort of interior smile, that kind of happiness that comes when you discover something really precious, something you didn’t even know you were looking for. That was the start of my love for Tina De Rosa and of my career as a translator.