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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