My lecture on Edith Bruck & 'This Darkness Will Never End'

Some of my readings have been sparsely attended (ahem!) but each one has brought me great joy because I have had the chance to meet face-to-face with readers of the translation who inevitably have compelling questions about Edith Bruck and This Darkness Will Never End. And in the case of my reading last year at the Forbes Library in Northampton, Mass., the wonderful librarians there asked if they could record my talk, giving me a very precious gift -- a permanent visual record of what I know about Edith Bruck, what I love about her work, and what has compelled me to translate her short stories, her poetry and one short bit of nonfiction.

As I've written here and for American Scholar, the story of Edith's life is fascinating, if you can call the personal embodiment of modern history's darkest moment fascinating. Deported from her native Hungary at age 12, she survived Auschwitz but her parents both died at the hands of the Nazis. As you'll learn in the lecture above, she was barely of high school age and had "lost everyone and everything." In her 20s, she moved to Italy, and fell in love with all that it had to offer. She's been writing in Italian ever since.

Thanks to everyone who has supported this translation! Last summer when I visited her in Rome, Edith told me she thinks about her parents nearly every day, and she said, "As long as I'm alive, so are they -- in my books, in my heart."

-30-