Edith Bruck & My Year in Translation (2025)

It was the year of the milestone for me -- I published my first book-length translation, This Darkness Will Never End. I both love and hate to admit that I've wanted to translate a book since studying Italian at Wesleyan, which was a while ago, hence the hate. (I have a similar push-pull when asking people to buy the translation -- read 'til the end to see what I mean).

As a result of the work required to promote the book, my annual tallying up of creative pursuits is a bit thin, although in support of the translation, I also published two shorter translations online of work by Edith Bruck:

*An essay called, “My Alma Mater is Auschwitz,” (in World Literature Today, published on Jan. 27, 2025, in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day)

AND

*An excerpt of Ms. Bruck's 1974 novella, "Two Empty Rooms," in Jewish Currents. 

As I staged readings for the translation around the Northeast (see pic of a book event in Connecticut) and taught a course at Wesleyan, I managed to spend very little time writing essays this year, although since my work at CNN has changed (I'm now working for CNN Travel), I did produce some travel writing, including an article that I wrote about visiting the liberal enclave of Northampton, Massachusetts.

But I did blog, especially about Italy! You might like this post. Or perhaps you want to hear me drone on about the little keepsakes I insist on buying? Read this post. 

And in addition to blogging about Italy, I also somehow wrote a blogpost in remembrance of Liz that readers found even though I didn't share it on social media. In fact, more people have read this post than any other post I've ever written in nearly 20 years of blogging. Perhaps there are lots of other translators or writers out there who only reach a milestone after the person who would have appreciated it the most has died and that's why so many people read it -- ? But maybe it's easy to explain: grief is our shared possession, the one club every single human being will join, wittingly or unwittingly. 

It's worth mentioning one more bit of writing: I published my first obituary with CNN -- one that I had pitched to write for our pre-written obit file and which combined my dayjob with my after-hours work: Rose Girone, the oldest known Holocaust survivor died at age 113. I finished the pre-write not too long before she unfortunately left us.

I did little in the way of literary criticism but I managed to publish a review of a book by one of my favorite authors, Patrick Modiano, for one of my favorite newspapers, The Boston Globe. 

What were you up to this year? What milestones did you reach or move toward?

One last question: As you contemplate gifts for Hanukkah and Christmas, will you consider giving someone you love This Darkness Will Never End?

I'm proud to have reached this milestone and I've found hard work is its own reward. But I believe in Edith Bruck, I believe in the powerful message of survival her work transmits and I believe we must know our history so my Christmas wish is to spread the word about this translation as far as it can go. Spreading the word, for better or for worse, means selling more translations (including ebooks!).

Yours in reading, Jeanne

-30-

What I'm reading: Ginzburg, sempre Ginzburg

I keep a book log of what I read, and it's now evolved into more of a book journal because I love noting passages that intrigue me. And I also note whether I am "reading" or "re-reading" a work. Each year, I am always re-reading something by Natalia Ginzburg.

But this year, I am actually reading new works by her as well! Not just revisiting Lessico Famigliare ("Family Lexicon," from NYRB, in the superb Jenny McPhee translation) or Le voci della sera, which is one of my favorites, but actually venturing into new Ginzburg territory, namely:

Vita immaginaria

Mai devi domandarmi

And in particular, I'd like to highlight the following work, which, as you will learn, is quite unusual:

È difficile parlare di sé

This last work is for the Ginzburg completist, and I keep it on the bedside table, which is to say I am not reading it cover to cover bur rather dipping into it as time allows. 

It is, and I kid you not, the transcript of a series of television interviews with Ginzburg in which she mulls over all of her major works, prompted by host Marino Sinibaldi. There were also some guests who made appearances -- critics and colleagues from Einaudi and some other famous writers. All of her works and each stage of her career, lovingly explored.

What's especially compelling is she elaborates on the death of her husband, Leone Ginzburg, at the hands of the Fascists, in a way she did not in any of her major published works. She reported on his death in her seminal essay, "Winter in Abruzzi," if reporting can consist of a single line (I don't blame her one bit -- when the candle of hope is brutally snuffed out, often the less said the better).

Of particular interest to me now among the works explored in the compendium is the essay "Gli ebrei," ["The Jews"], which appeared in Vita immaginaria and which was published immediately following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre where Israeli athletes were murdered.

Most notably, she wonders if the Jews who settled in modern-day Israel should have settled elsewhere, if they should have been given land elsewhere (she mentions Canada). She says many other amazing things in this essay (and the book of transcripts, for that matter) about her identity as a woman with a Jewish and Catholic upbringing. I highly recommend it!

I've written about Ginzburg's work for the Kenyon Review and also for the literary site, Reading in Translation. She remains an enigma -- someone who lived a traditional woman's life, writing in fits and starts when she wasn't changing diapers or putting dinner on the table, someone who eschewed feminism, someone who can at times be hidden in plain sight, to quote an article about her, but who has become in the US arguably the most famous Italian woman writer, aside from Elena Ferrante, possibly, only possibly. She might be THE most famous Italian woman writer for Americans.

More so than Elsa Morante. More so than Grazia Deledda. More so than Dacia Maraini.

If you haven't read any works by her, begin with Family Lexicon (preferably the Jenny McPhee translation published by NYRB). It won the Strega, which is Italy's highest literary award.

And happy reading!

Come to a reading in Northampton on Dec. 8

Event alert!

I'll be reading from my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, on Monday at the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, home to Smith College. Here are the details:

        Mon., Dec. 8, 6 p.m.

        Forbes Library, 20 West Street, Northampton, MA.

I plan to excerpt a part of a speech I gave about Edith Bruck at Otterbein College in October. The title is, "The Age I Was When I Lost Everyone and Everything."

For more information, visit the library's event page.

See you there!