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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