Postcard from Montreal (2026)

I'm terribly behind on blogging about Montreal but let me quickly say it's one of my favorite cities in the whole wide world.

I love the way it allows me to slip into a foreign locale, just a few hours from my boring, suburban life in Connecticut.

Everyone is on bikes in Montreal.

Everywhere there's a mural waiting for your gaze. Everywhere there's a patch of greenery, a pocket park, a median full of flowers tended by anyone and everyone.

Every neighborhood seems conceived for people to stroll or bike or sit on a front balcony and enjoy the world as it passes by. The city, but with touches of the country.

Every block in Montreal appears to have a bakery whose pastries will literally warm your heart! Conceived with love and lots of butter.

All of this to say, if you haven't visited Montreal, go. Go now, go soon, just go there.

I'll be blogging about the city again but I wanted to begin gushing about this place, which has become a beloved spot once again, after first visiting as a child.

When I visit Montreal, I go to immerse myself in a Francophone world that also leaves space for other cultures (especially Italian culture). I go so I can be somewhere foreign without an overnight flight that leaves me sleepless. I go because the pastries are gorgeous and delicious.

But it feels especially important to visit Canada now for a completely different set of reasons.

Canadians are our neighbors! Our friends. A country so similar to ours -- and one that's lent us some of the best comedians of the past 50 years -- but which has retained arguably a stronger sense of community and a sharper notion of neighborliness.

In other words, we have much to learn from this neighbor, regardless of what politicians may say. 

Highlights from the trip:

*We once again biked using the city's Bixi bike-sharing app, and it was delightful. 

*We visited a lot of bookstores and they were a joy to explore (including Librairie Le Port de tête, various branches of Renaud-Bray, and Multimags, which arguably is really just an extremely large newsstand but which sells a lot of wonderful books, and a lot of wonderful magazines, which were a balm for my heart. Magazine World is wonderful).

*We stayed near Parc Fontaine where Montrealers biked, played boules, held concerts at an outdoor amphitheater, sat by a pond, ran and danced. Delightful!

Signs of a good trip: everyone in the family embraces Montreal, finding an outlet for needs and passions, and I couldn't stop writing in my journal.

More to come!

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Commonwealth Books (Boston) & the book I had to buy

Walking around Boston one afternoon before a concert in 2024, Mike and I stumbled into a used bookstore on a sidestreet.

It was one of those classic old-school shops crammed with books, where books were the decoration, books were the products, books were all that you could see from floor to ceiling.

I've developed the habit of looking for books by Edith Bruck wherever I go, and since it was a bookstore that specialized in used books and hard to find volumes, I took a chance and wandered over to the foreign language book area.

To my amazement, the shop had a copy of Edith Bruck's Andremo in città.

It was an edition published by Lerici, an edition I didn't have, and one that featured a rather enigmatic photo.

But I'm burying the lede. It was a copy of the book I was translating at that moment. The first-ever English edition, which would the following year be published under the title This Darkness Will Never End.

When I approached the counter to pay, I mumbled to the owner that it was stunning he had the book in stock since Italian books are hard to find in the US (with a few notable exceptions) and that I happened to be translating it into English. 

Did he hear me? Did he care? I don't know and it doesn't matter because Commonweath Books officially entered the pantheon of my beloved places at that moment.

Serendipity. Kismet. And the pleasures of visiting bookstores, especially storied bookstores with used, out-of-print or hard-to-find editions.

(Also: the pleasures of translation, of meeting a living legend, of fulfilling a lifelong goal and of trying to live a life steeped in letters).

Commonweath Books

9 Spring Lane

Boston, Mass.

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What I bought at ll Libraccio (Firenze)

There are many fine bookstores in Florence but Il Libraccio is particularly helpful when you're looking for hard-to-find and possibly out-of-print books.

I found a book I needed and had been searching for when I visited the Florentine branch of Il Libraccio during our vacation last year:

Lettera da Francoforte

("Letter from Frankfurt")

It's by "my author" -- Edith Bruck, and the plot is as follows: A Holocaust survivor becomes embroiled in an odd correspondence with an official at the German organization that disburses relief/compensation funds to survivors. How it ends is stunning.

Since I began translating Andremo in città (in English: This Darkness Will Never End), I've been trying to read all of Edith's work but it's not easy for two reasons:

-There aren't many American booksellers that stock a lot of Italian titles (there aren't even many that stock SOME Italian titles; two notable exceptions are Rizzoli in New York City and I AM Books in Boston) (And as for Amazon, sometimes the Italian books on offer there are very expensive).

-Some of Edith Bruck's work is out of print.

When I was visiting Il Libraccio, I also bought:

Vita immaginaria by Natalia Ginzburg

(I probably buy a book by Ginzburg every trip -- I'm always reading and re-reading her work)

Il Libraccio also has branches in Milan, Ferrara, Pisa and Rome, among other cities. The branch in Florence that I visited is at Via dei Cerretani, 16R.

Last but not least: to the owners of all of the independent bookstores out there, I'd like to say I love you. And I hope to visit as many indies as possible, in the years to come.

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Ask your library to buy THIS DARKNESS WILL NEVER END

Did you know you could ask your public library to buy a book that you'd like to read?

Yes! (See UPDATE below)

And that book could be This Darkness Will Never End, my translation of Edith Bruck's debut short story collection.

I'm thrilled to say the New York Public Library and the Free Library of Philadelphia have already bought copies. Pending requests include Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago.

(If you live in any of these cities, go ahead and make a second request. It can't hurt!) 

(Click here for Los Angeles: https://www.lapl.org/suggest-a-purchase)

Atlanta friends, the book is not part of collections in Fulton County or DeKalb, so can you help?

I asked my library in West Hartford to buy a copy, and they did! (They hosted me for a reading, too.) Wesleyan University also has a copy.

UPDATE: Thanks to Baltimore County Public Library for accepting my purchase suggestion!

The book is of particular interest to survivors of the Holocaust and anyone who knows a survivor, but it's also popular with readers of Italian literature, lovers of short stories and fans of Roberto Benigni's Oscar-winning 1997 movie, "Life Is Beautiful," which film scholars say was partly inspired by the title story of my translation.

When Edith first began publishing her work in Italy in the late 1950s, Italian critics compared her to Anne Frank. The young Dutch girl's diary had been published a few years before Edith's debut came out in Italy.

Just as Anne's diary captures a surreal moment of families in hiding, the stories in my translation reveal a lost world of poor Hungarian Jews, at the mercy of the Nazis and the many collaborators they inspired during their campaign of hatred. And yet, Edith still manages to evoke the joys of a loving family, and the gift that is remembrance.

All of this to say, it's a work that would be a credit to your library.

I'm grateful for all of the support I've received from libraries. I gave readings of the translation at libraries in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. The Forbes Library in Northampton even recorded my talk, which you can see by clicking here.

I'll close with a photo of my translation on a shelf not at a library but at Atticus Books in New Haven (you can also ask your favorite indie to buy it). When I visited the city for CNN Travel, I was thrilled to see the bookstore stocked my translation!

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Re-discovering New Haven for CNN Travel

I got to visit New Haven on the company dime and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Now you can, too -- here's my story. It's part of a series we've been doing for three years on the best towns in America that fly under the radar and are often far from the major metropolitan areas.

New Haven is home to Yale -- which you can see in this photo I snapped -- and it's also one of the most walkable cities I've visited in the US.

Here's a note I scrawled in my journal:

New Haven is glorious! I don’t really say it happily but rather with a not-so-healthy dose of jealousy and what-if-ism! It would appear getting into Yale is a golden ticket in more ways than one. You get to live in a beautiful, vibrant city that’s walkable and architecturally alluring (in addition to studying at one of the finest universities in the world).

Before I forget: New Haven is for walkers. I walked so much. So it was really unavoidable that I’d love it, I suppose.

Also, my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, was on the shelf at Atticus! YES!

Interesting fact: I gave all of my leftovers to men on New Haven Green who appeared to need food.

Moment of beauty after the visit: I bought Leo a small puzzle of the painting The Wave at the Yale Art Gallery and he really liked it. He asked to open it immediately and then instead of watching TV, he began to assemble it. When we turned on “Father Ted” after a bit, he didn’t pay much attention to it, preferring instead to painstakingly find pieces of boats that appear in the painting.

(The Yale Art Gallery is quite nice and I didn’t even get to visit the sculpture garden – home to an Alexander Calder – because of the rain).

Anyway, please read my CNN story!

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“Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945”

I write letters to the editor of The New York Times but only occasionally are they accepted. This one below was not but I remain fascinated by the book at the heart of my letter because it's about World War II, and ever since I began translating the work of Edith Bruck, I've been mesmerized by this epic period in recent history. As you know, I'm trying to read as many important books about the war and about Holocaust survivors as I can, and this one goes on the TBR pile.

To the editor of the New York Times Book Review,

In his review of Ian Buruma’s book, Stay Alive: Berlin,1939-1945, Kevin Peraino says he wishes the author had “delved deeper.” 

I don’t doubt him but if Buruma manages to convey even a bit of the uncanny experience of surviving World War II, especially in Germany, that will satisfy me. 

I’ve heard about the war and ‘the Greatest Generation’ my whole life, but stupidly ignored its importance until I began translating the work of a Holocaust survivor (Edith Bruck). 

Her story is fairly typical but no less compelling because of that: At age 13, she was deported from her native Hungary by the Nazis, and, as she would write later, “lost everyone and everything.” After I translated that line, I decided I needed to permanently study the Holocaust and by extension World War II. 

I’m not related to anyone who fought in combat but still the era not only witnessed the greatest atrocity of the modern age but also shaped my parents, born just before the war, and continued to influence the world I was born into, three decades after the fighting stopped. I’ll never know enough so I keep reading, and Buruma’s book now goes on the to-be-read pile.

Regards,

Jeanne Bonner

“When You Listen to This Song: On Memory, Loss, and Writing” (Lola Lafon)

I've reviewed a short nonfiction book for World Literature Today called When You Listen to This Song: On Memory, Loss, and Writing, but the review won't appear until July and since I remain haunted by it, I'm jotting down a few thoughts here (I've reviewed books for WLT before, and the magazine also published a speech by Edith Bruck that I translated called, "My Alma Mater is Auschwitz").

(UPDATE: You can now read the review here.)

It's a fascinating if somewhat slim exploration of the annex at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and behind-the-scenes details about Anne Frank’s life, diary, father, etc.

It raises lots of interesting questions about the image now attached to Anne and grapples with the topic in a very nuanced way, recognizing that the story of Anne Frank has long since ceased to be simply the tragic story of a girl whose life was cut short by barbarism. Author Lola Lafon writes, “How beloved she is, this young Jewish girl who is no longer."

Lafon wrote the book after sleeping in the annex at the Anne Frank House, not something just any visitor can do. (The annex is the hidden compartment where Anne and her family and another family lived, while trying to escape deportation).

As she prepares for the visit, she writes, “I will spend the night in this space where for 25 months eight people submitted themselves to silence, learning all the forms it could take, from whispers to muffled steps to total immobility.”

In preparation for reviewing this book (published by Yale University Press), I also read Ruth Franklin's The Many Lives of Anne Frank. Franklin writes, “Since it first appeared in the Netherlands more than 75 years ago, Anne – who, if she had survived the camps, would be nearly 100 years old – has become an icon.”

According to Franklin, the diary has sold 30 million copies and “is the most famous work of literature to arise from the Holocaust.” 

Like everyone else who's read the diary, I've had occasion to think about this poor little German girl whose life was cut short. But I've also had the opportunity to reflect on one particular aspect of her story: my author, Edith Bruck, was compared to Anne when her first book came out because it was published a few years after the diary was translated into Italian. Italian critics said Bruck was the kind of writer Anne could have become had she survived.

It’s an interesting comparison because Bruck, like all survivors including Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, has written about what Anne could not: what happened in the Nazi concentration camps and life after liberation. Moreover, many women survivors have told their stories but they failed to make a deep impression and hence don’t enter into the widely-known public conception of the Holocaust. That wasn’t the fate of Anne Frank’s diary, first published in Dutch in 1947. 

A reader can feel as though she knows a lot about Anne Frank without knowing many, many details of her story. Indeed, there are stunning little tidbits about the Frank family that will leave you breathless. For example, while in hiding in a hidden compartment in the building that housed Anne’s father’s company, the family had to keep to a strict schedule of silence since not all the workers knew they were there. Starting at 8 a.m. each day, they could make no noise whatsoever. Then at 12:30, when the workers broke for lunch, those in hiding could use the bathroom, have a bite to eat or talk. At 1:30, they were back to a routine of no noise, no movement, no conversations. 

Born in 1974, Lafon is widely known in France as a feminist writer. She is the author of the novel, The Little Communist Who Never Smiled. This book was translated from the French by Lauren Elkin. It's a very smooth translation.  

Why read this book? The author addresses the age-old scourges of anti-Semitism, exploitation and historical amnesia but has found a new approach in what some have called “a sleepover with the dead.” 

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The 20th anniversary of my blog!

Two decades ago, I sought a method to log the ways Italy had seduced me, and the activities I pursued so that the language of Dante would remain impressed in my mind. And that's how this blog was born. Early posts were about Italian meals Mike had made, rides in the Alfa and wines we bought.

It has evolved over time to become a public diary of my thoughts, my achievements, my passions (often involving Italy or Italian, but not always) and my commitment to fluency in the form of blogposts in Italian, among other activities (movie reviews of Italian films and of course endless ruminating about books, too!). Oh and a few mentions of the book-length translation I finally managed to publish (Did I mention it's called This Darkness Will Never End?!).

I'm going to commemorate the 20th anniversary with a series of posts. This is the first. And here I'm going to very simply revisit a few of the posts that have resonated the most with readers. I'd be thrilled if you read some of the posts, and I hope perhaps the blog inspires you to return to your own passions and hobbies with renewed vigor.

Posts I liked:

"Tiny Moments of Exquisite Beauty," or the travelogue from my 2025 visit to Italy: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2025/08/tiny-moments-of-exquisite-beauty-in.html

*Praise for the film that convinced me to study Italian and changed my life: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2024/03/an-oscar-winning-film-seen-on-whim.html

Posts readers liked:

*About my fears of how the pandemic could permanently re-shape my life: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2021/05/what-ive-feared-about-post-pandemic-life.html

*On the reasons I need to hoard (or, my letter to Marie Kondo): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2017/12/dear-marie-kondo.html

*On the reference to Angelina Jolie in Roberto Saviano's book, Gomorra (note, it's in ITALIAN): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2008/06/gomorra-angelina-jolie.html

Posts about travel and the glorious Italian language:

*The time Leo learned how to curse in Italian: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/08/italian-lessons.html

*What can you do with a mere 24 hours in Rome? Oh quite a bit

*When I want what I should not want (in Italy): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-boarding-doors-are-closing-jeanne.html

*How can Milan be this beautiful? https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2020/07/from-archive-italian-diary-may-2017.html

Posts about Leo:

The joys of running -- even just short distances -- with Leo: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2023/03/running-very-little-very-often.html

Leonardo from Atlanta (not Vinci): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-little-artist-whose-mother-is.html

A Day in the Life of this American Man at Age 10 (Esquire article re-enactment): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2023/07/a-day-in-life-of-this-american-man-at.html

Posts about books:

My all-time favorite books, essays and short stories: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2024/07/literature-ive-loved-after-nyt-list.html

A book list for those looking to read the work of women Holocaust survivors: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2024/01/women-holocaust-survivors-reading-list.html

My book log for the year I read Le otto montagne by Paolo Cognetti and many other outstanding works: https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2022/12/what-i-read-in-2022-what-i-plan-to-read.html

Women authors have often been overlooked in Italy (in ITALIAN): https://ciambellina.blogspot.com/2017/06/dove-sono-finite-le-scrittrici-italiane.html

*

Thanks as always for reading my blog. 

The best gift anyone can give me is to care about Leo in some way. 

But the second best? Read my work.

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Memories of the House of the Dead (Luciana Nissim Momogliano)

File under: What I'm reading

I read a very short book on the train to NYC in February by a woman who was deported with Primo Levi: Luciana Nissim Momogliano. 

It’s called Ricordi della casa dei morti. ["Memories of the house of the dead"]. A very insightful book! In the most difficult situation I can imagine, she managed to survive in the same way Primo Levi did: she was able to practice her profession – medicine – just as he worked as a chemist. But she was still starving, and she still observed atrocities. She says at one point that the head doctor in her barracks had to kill two children who were born in Auschwitz. Another semi-eyewitness account of this particular slice of the Holocaust but still not enough information for me [I'd like to read firsthand accounts of women who gave birth in the Nazi concentration camps. Do they exist?]

The book clarifies something I should have already understood: many Holocaust victims were gassed – thrown into the camera a gas – and then cremated. 

She also says when they received rations, the question was always: 'Do I keep some until tomorrow?' But she said any decision she made felt wrong -- because she was still starving.

She also was able to transfer to another concentration camp later in 1944 and that likely saved her as well. Her friend, Vanda Maestro, whom Primo Levi also wrote about, died after Luciana left for the other camp. 

I'm happy to say this is one more book from the canon I'm seeking to exhaust: books by women survivors of the Holocaust. Because women's experiences of the Shoah were different. It's something I first grasped when I read Edith Bruck's Andremo in città, and that revelation convinced me to translate the work (which, as you know, is called This Darkness Will Never End in my English translation). My life really changed once I met Edith Bruck!

Sidenote: I bought this book directly from Giuntina last summer during my visit to Florence. I had written to the editorial staff to say there were books of theirs that I couldn’t easily find so was there a bookshop onsite? There isn't but they said they would sell me the books directly so I went and happily spent more than I should have.

The author mentions that period of follia between July 1943 and September 1943 when Fascism appeared to be overthrown, only to have the Germans essentially invade Italy and re-impose Fascist rule. What a moment that must have been -- sheer joy followed by sheer terror and the anguish that descends when you realize the specter you thought you'd escape looms anew.

Nothing original to say but here I am: I'll simply have to read about World War II for the rest of my life. I'll never fully understand what our grandparents and parents lived through -- and none of mine were in combat! None of mine were Jewish, none of mine were deported or sent to a prisoner of war camp. And yet still: They lived through a period of immense sacrifice and tension, where the fate of the world hung in the balance. So I'm simply going to try to know as much about it as I can because its impact and scope shaped the world we're living in today.

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The Four Seasons Hotel in Florence

The boy whose Fiorentina soccer team shirt reads 'Nato Perfetto' ("born perfect") gets around. 

This is a photo of Leo, aged 5, in the park surrounding the absolutely stunning Four Seasons Hotel in Florence, close to Piazza D'Azeglio and not too far from the Accademia (home of the David statue).

Somehow this fancy-schmancy hotel has an exquisite private park to its name, but there's a coffee bar there so you can show up at the hotel and simply say you're visiting the cafe to gain entrance to this amazing park, which, as you can see, is adorned with sculpture.

(No one can be denied a coffee in Italy!)

We were staying with my old roommate whose current apartment is nearby so we were game to go.

Yet since the park was so beautiful and the hotel clearly for high rollers, the day that Leo and I arrived, I hesitated. Could it really be that simple? So when I asked a hotel employee if we could enter, the born-and-bred Florentine took one look at Leo's shirt, which featured the symbol and color of Florence's beloved soccer team, and he said, "Con quella maglietta lui può andare dove vuole." In that shirt, he can go wherever he wants!

It's absolutely worth a detour if you're visiting Florence -- Italy is full of hidden treasures, often in courtyards and concealed behind high stone walls. It's nice that this one is sort of within reach.

I was reminded of this hotel recently because one of my sisters will be visiting Florence in the Fall for a wedding so I looked up the rates.

Well, she is a bit of a high roller but the cost is King-of-England-level high rolling so she might just have to pass on this one! 

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