Ask your library to buy THIS DARKNESS WILL NEVER END

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

Yes!

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.

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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“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 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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What I bought at I AM Books in Boston (2026)

Last year, I gave a talk about my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, at the Italian bookstore in Boston. It was wonderful to speak about this short story collection that I'd lovingly translated while surrounded by Italian books.

So when I visited Boston this year, I made a beeline for the store. I AM Books is in the Italian North End of the city, and it's adorable.

What I like: there are Italian books there -- which may seem quite obvious but it's important to state because it's not easy to buy Italian literature in the US at a reasonable price, or at all. There aren't that many shops that stock titles in the original language -- Rizzoli in New York is one place. And I AM Books is another.

But logically, the shop also stocks Italian books in translation (a good reason to give a talk about a translation there). Many people who pass the store won't be fluent in Italian or studying the language but may want to discover Italian literature in translation. 

As you can see, the shop also stocks magazines, and boy do I like that. If your store sells La Settimana Enigmistica or Bell'Italia, I will most likely need to buy a copy of one or both of them. And Mike bought a cooking magazine!

While remaining a solid bookstore that sells books, I AM Books also has a lot of fine gift items that a shopper might want as she visits the North End of Boston and becomes immersed in the Italian quarter. I went a little crazy last year when I was there to give the talk, and bought a cookbook plus a book for Leo about Italian hand gestures and a book by Natalia Ginzburg and... 

Last but not least, the store manager is a lovely person! She took charge of my reading, and made the shop a cozy place to talk about this book that means so much to me.

So if you're visiting Boston, consider stopping by I AM Books. And if you read or study Italian, don't just consider it -- make a point of visiting the store. You won't be sorry!

I AM Books

124 Salem Street

Boston, Mass.

iambooksboston.com 

Book giveaway -- my translation turns one!

UPDATED -- (see below): To celebrate the one-year anniversary of my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, I'd like to give away a copy of the book to an interested teacher or deserving student.

My translation was included in a literature course last year at a university in Ohio, and when I gave a talk there about Edith Bruck, it was a joy to behold watching the professor speak about the stories I'd translated with my whole heart.

Are you a college professor or a high school teacher? Do you teach courses (or a unit) on Holocaust/World War II literature or literature in translation? (Or do you know someone who might want to consider this book for a course adoption?)

The translation would make for an interesting companion piece to Elie Wiesel's Night. The course at Otterbein University in Ohio included Survival in Auschwitz (Primo Levi) and A Scrap of Time (Ida Fink).

Several stories in This Darkness Will Never End feature children or teens as protagonists so high school students might more easily relate to the work; the book is notable for the prominence of women and children in contrast to other well-known examples of Holocaust narrative.

Alternately, do you know a student who would appreciate these stories? Perhaps a history buff or an English major (current or future!).

You can leave a message here or send me a private message via my personal website to initiate contact:

https://www.jeannebonner.net/contact

UPDATE: A teacher in New Jersey is already teaching the translation to his students and requested an additional copy so that he can propose it to administrators for grade-wide adoption next year. WOW! Thank you, Sam. The translation is headed to you! (And eternal thanks to your students for writing a birthday card -- in Italian! -- to Edith)

While the book was published in 1962 in Italy, the stories take place before, during and after World War II. They are mainly set in a village in rural Hungary, where Edith was born in 1931. She was deported in 1944, but managed to survive Auschwitz (which she's called "the University of Evil") and a host of other concentration camps. She eventually made her way to Italy and since 1954, that's where she's lived and worked.

To provide a quick overview of the book, here’s a recording of a talk I gave about my translation, courtesy of the wonderful librarians in Northampton, Massachusetts (it includes a lot of biographical information and outtakes from my visit with Edith Bruck last summer in Rome).

The Jewish Book Council published an insightful review, which you can read here:

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/this-darkness-will-never-end

(You can also click on any of the links in this post for more information).

Happy book birthday to my little translation!

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'This Darkness Will Never End' turns one!

Once upon a time, I'd never heard of the phrase "book birthday." And now my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, is turning one. Happy book birthday to my little translation!

My life has changed since I began translating Edith Bruck’s work, and also in the year since my translation of her first short story collection was published. I've spent a lot of precious, joyful time talking to people about the woman who was describing herself when she wrote about a fictional girl in the short story, "Matzoh Bread," who was "the age I'd been when I lost everyone and everything." (Learn about my book giveaway here.)

I've gained a permanent side gig reading about World War II; at first, I devoured works by the other women authors who wrote about their experiences of deportation, and now almost anything pertaining to the war that gave birth to The Greatest Generation (I'm currently reading "The Longest Day," by Cornelius Ryan -- better late than never, right?).

We all have side tables and book shelves crammed with books we plan to read but I think This Darkness Will Never End, which brings Edith's seminal 1962 short story collection into the English-speaking world, is worthy of your time:

        Click here to buy from Amazon

        OR here to buy from Bookshop

And if you have a moment, you can write a review on Amazon. My sincere thanks to everyone who's done so already! And if you're on Goodreads, go ahead and shelve the book. After all, you've probably seen Roberto Benigni's film, "Life Is Beautiful," which was inspired in part by the title story of this book.

Also: are you in a book club? Here's a reading guide for the translation. I'd love for you to read the translation, and maybe you could also consider giving it as a gift.

If you’d like to read some of her other work, below you’ll find links to some of my translations of her fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

*My translation of a speech she gave called "My Alma Mater Is Auschwitz":

https://worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/essay/my-alma-mater-auschwitz-edith-bruck

*An excerpt of her second short story collection, Two Empty Rooms:

https://jewishcurrents.org/two-empty-rooms

*Translations of some of my favorite poems by Edith Bruck, including one in which she writes, "If there’s another life/I will be a yellow star/ To remind you once upon a time​/there was Auschwitz​":

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/edith-bruck-versi-vissuti/

One more thing: here’s a recording of a talk I gave about my translation, courtesy of the wonderful librarians in Northampton, Massachusetts (it includes a lot of biographical information and tidbits from my visit with Edith Bruck last summer in Rome).

I’ll close once again with one of my favorite lines from Edith’s work (which you can hear at the link to the American Scholar's podcast, "Read Me a Poem"):

Sometimes it takes so little

Almost nothing

A simple gesture

A glance;

As when in the Lager

They allowed you a potato

A turnip

A tattered glove

Life is beautiful in those moments

And human beings so very kind

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'This Darkness Will Never End' is 'powerful,' @Assoc. of Jewish Libraries

A reviewer writing in the newsletter of the Association of Jewish Libraries highly recommends my translation, This Darkness Will Never End, calling the work an "outstanding book."

Michlean Lowy Amir, who retired from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, expresses amazement that it's taken so long for these "powerful stories" to be published in English, and I agree!

She also writes, "This title is highly recommended for every Jewish library and to all other libraries with Holocaust materials."

She notes that the work foregrounds the voices of women and children, which of course is an essential and notable aspect of the stories, and of Edith Bruck's perspective as a Holocaust survivor.

One wonderful outcome of reading reviews of the translation is discovering the vantage point of reviewers, which can serve to illuminate a particular aspect of the translation.

I'm somewhat used to the lag that can occur between the publication date of the original foreign language work and the publication date of the translation in English. Perhaps this is especially so because I've focused on overlooked works by Italian women writers. Many of their works languish for years and decades before an Anglophone publisher shows them some love!

But it makes an impression to see her mention the original publication date -- 1962 -- right next to the publication date of my translation -- 2025. Wow! That IS a long lag.

The review appears in the newsletter, which isn't available online, as far as I can see.

But that doesn't diminish my profound appreciation! Thanks to Michlean and the Association of Jewish Libraries for highlighting Edith's work.

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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."

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Edith Bruck & International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan. 27)

Unfortunately, I won’t make it to NYC today where outside of the Italian Consulate the names of all of the Italian victims of the Nazis will be read as part of a solemn, annual ritual that I’ve attended multiple times since I began translating Edith Bruck’s work. But I’m thinking of her (and all of those who were persecuted during World War II), along with the loved ones she lost, “swallowed up,” as she wrote, during “the long dark days of annihilation.” 

If you’d like to read some of her work, below you’ll find links to some of my translations of her fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

*My translation of a speech she gave called "My Alma Mater Is Auschwitz":

https://worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/essay/my-alma-mater-auschwitz-edith-bruck

 

*An excerpt of her second short story collection, Two Empty Rooms:

https://jewishcurrents.org/two-empty-rooms

*Translations of some of my favorite poems by Edith Bruck, including one in which she writes, "If there’s another life/I will be a yellow star/ To remind you once upon a time​/there was Auschwitz​":

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/edith-bruck-versi-vissuti/

*Last but not least: This Darkness Will Never End, my translation of her seminal 1962 short story collection:

        Click here to buy from Amazon

        OR here to buy from Bookshop

Wait, one more thing: here’s a recording of a talk I gave about my translation, courtesy of the wonderful librarians in Northampton, Massachusetts (it includes a lot of biographical information and anecdotes from my visit with Edith Bruck last summer in Rome).

I’ll close with one of my favorite lines from Edith’s work:

Sometimes it takes so little

Almost nothing

A simple gesture

A glance;

As when in the Lager

They allowed you a potato

A turnip

A tattered glove

Life is beautiful in those moments

And human beings so very kind

 -30-

What I read in 2025

Not a great year in reading for me and I am all to blame, a self-inflicted wound owing to distraction and commitments related to the translation (I also taught a class at Wesleyan, which requires me to re-read a lot of books from the course text list and thus neglect any non-course books I may have been reading). 

But I do like to log the year in reading and so here are a few books that sparked my imagination in significant ways:

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs

The experience of reading John and Paul was so seismic that I wonder if perhaps I've been excluding a genre that I would otherwise love, namely biographies.

It’s been a while since I devoured a book the way I read this book. As I wrote in my journal, "I’ve been staying up until 11 p.m. reading it – not looking at Facebook, not fooling around with the laptop. Just reading as much of the book as I can manage – running to it whenever I have a moment free."

Am I reading the wrong books? So should I be reading more biographies? Or books about rock icons I love?! (Quick! Someone send me a biography of Bono and/or U2)

I think childhood -- and childhood obsessions -- could be the key here. When I read about the Beatles, it's as though I am reading about someone I knew – as if someone wrote a biography of St. Anthony’s High School or the streets of Florence or my mother. I followed the Beatles so closely as a young girl that I suppose that's why. As I wrote on Goodreads, it was part and parcel of my girlhood obsession with the Beatles to explore in minute detail the inner workings of the Lennon-McCarthy songwriting partnership, and thanks to this wonderful dual biography of the two Beatles, I can do just that. For anyone who's ever had any kind of Beatle worship, this book is essential. And what an interesting concept! Exploring this relationship as a one-of-a-kind partnership that eschews easy definition. 

I read another book that fascinated me while also being revolting:

Nobody's Girl by Virginia Giuffre

I both recommend and don't recommend this book by one of the best-known victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Would you like to confront pure evil? On the other hand, I made a point of purchasing the hardback so that my purchase could be counted in the hopes there are many, many sales. Sales = interest. Sales = this topic is important.

Per my routine, I also read a book by French novelist Patrick Modiano (which I was even able to review for the Boston Globe) and I re-read A Christmas Carol, something I've been doing every year at Christmas for about a decade (it's worth reading each year a line with which Marley chastises Scrooge: "Mankind was my business! The common welfare was my business...")

And I read another book that satisfies my nascent need to know everything about Nazi-occupied Europe: The Propagandist. I wrote about it for the 'What We're Reading' rubric published by The Common literary magazine (back in March). It's a fascinating though also revolting book about a French family that was pro-Hitler during World War II and most notably long afterwards as well! I believe it caused a bit of a stir when it was published in France. 

I also began reading (not read, in the past tense) (see distraction above, also insistence on reading multiple books at once) Eichmann in Jerusalem, the seminal account by Hannah Arendt of Adolf Eichmann's infamous trial for war crimes. There are a few books in the world that are so fundamental for understanding human behavior that you can glean quite a bit by reading half or failing to finish, and this is one such book. What I read about Eichmann's attitude, his ordinariness, his spoken testimony at the trial, the fact that he lived for quite a few years (dare I say happily?) in Argentina before being captured, all of this furnishes me with new horrifying information about the semi-recent historical event that engrosses me the most. (But I plan to finish it this year). 

Similarly, I read a book I'd long been searching for: Lettera da Francoforte by "my" author, Edith Bruck (translation: Letter from Frankfurt; not available in English). I found it at Il Libraccio in Florence -- a review copy, I believe, since on the front it says "inedito," ('unpublished'). It's the story of a Holocaust victim who tries to apply to a compensation program run by the German government. No, I do not know how autobiographical this work is but I'm going to see if I can find out. Did Edith ever apply to this fund? Is this fund real? I've come to know a little bit about the Claims Conference, which distributes compensation to victims of the Holocaust but I don't believe it is run by Germany.

Please review 'This Darkness Will Never End' on Amazon

I've been talking up my translation every way I can -- blogposts, public readings, bookfairs, Facebook messages, a trip to Ohio, mentions in a family Christmas newsletter, you name it!

And I've been foisting this work on everyone I know since it was published last April.

But I've neglected to say anything about reviewing This Darkness Will Never End on Amazon. Probably because I was born in 1850, as I like to say (I also like to add that Leo corrected me one day with this quip: "More like 1770." Ouch!) And also because I've been focused on readings, my dayjob, Leo, breathing, etc.

I do, of course, use Amazon! All the time. 

And I do want people to find it on Amazon! A famous author actually did just that and she got in touch with me, which was amazing.

You don't need to be famous to leave a review on Amazon of This Darkness Will Never End.

You just need to have some thoughts about the translation or Edith Bruck. So if you've read it, I hope you will leave a review and provide some honest feedback. Here's the link again:

https://www.amazon.com/This-Darkness-Will-Never-End/dp/1589882016

GRAZIE di cuore!

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At a little library near you: 'This Darkness Will Never End'

UPDATED I've been dropping off copies of the translation at little libraries, including the one in Washington Market Park in Manhattan seen in the photo. I affix a note that explains how the book is a gift to whoever finds it and perhaps if the reading experience is a pleasure, would the person consider buying a copy for a friend?

Thousands of books are published each year and it's easy for a book from a small press to get lost, especially a translated title. So I took it upon myself to find a new way to introduce the book to a wider audience.

Since This Darkness Will Never End is a short story collection, I think it will work well for book clubs and I've devised a book club guide that you can find here.

It's also good for course adoptions -- thanks to Otterbein for proving this! My translation of Edith Bruck's first short story collection complements other Holocaust narrative texts such as works by Primo Levi or even The Diary of Anne Frank.

UPDATE: Copies of the translation have also been placed in Little Libraries in Boston, New Haven and Belmar, NJ.

Now that I think about it, I should have included my email address on the note affixed to the translation -- that way, I would possibly know who found the copy. Like a message in a bottle!

If you haven't read the translation yet, here's hoping you find a copy in a little library near you! Or you can buy it here or on Amazon (where you can consider writing a customer review!).

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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 the dearth of piazzas in the US and another 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

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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!

Please Give the Gift of Reading ‘This Darkness Will Never End’

As long as I'm alive, so are they -- in my books, in my heart.

This precious thought is one of many that Edith Bruck ("my author") shared with me in July when I visited her in Rome. We were speaking about her parents, and in Italian, her words were, "Finché vivo, vivono loro ... nei miei libri, nel mio cuore."

It's a sentiment that resonates deeply with me, even though my life's story is completely different from Edith Bruck's.

I, too, will do anything to keep the memory of my parents alive. And I'm so grateful that they conveyed the importance of literature, and also that they signaled to me early in my life the critical, painful and cataclysmic moment in modern history represented by the Holocaust.

In her case, she's kept alive the memory of two souls who were cruelly persecuted and then executed by the Nazis in 1944. For more than 80 years, she's borne witness to their tragic ends.

And the least I can do, as a translator of her work, is spread the word about her work, and share in the toil in one tiny way by translating her short stories.

Publishing This Darkness Will Never End, my translation of Edith's first short story collection, has been the highlight of my year, and it's given me membership in a club I deem quite special: the group of translators of Edith's work. They are translators of work by an Italian woman author. And last but not least, they are translators of works by Holocaust survivors. 

The colorful stories in this collection unearth a lost way of life: the rituals, preoccupations and joys of devout Jews living in rural Hungary in the years leading up to World War II. There are stories about the fearsome shochet who deems meat kosher -- or maybe not! -- and stories about the desperate but occasionally hilarious ways a poor man may attempt to feed his family.

The Holocaust looms like a specter in many of the stories -- sometimes only in the background, sometimes as the engine that drives the story to its harrowing climax -- but these tales are also testaments to the power of love and the primacy of familial bonds.

Her personal story is mesmerizing. Deported as a teen by the Germans, she survived Auschwitz and eventually made her way to Italy where she quickly mastered the Italian language, which became the instrument of her deliverance. She's published fiction, nonfiction and poetry. So treasured is she in Italy, Pope Francis insisted on meeting her and the two struck up a wonderful friendship.

At 94, she continues to write, dream, remember, share.

To those of you who have read the book, my thanks always. As you contemplate gifts for Hanukkah and Christmas, will you consider giving someone you love This Darkness Will Never End? 

You can buy the book on Amazon, at Bookshop or directly from the publisher. You can also buy it at Barnes & Noble, available to order and pick up at your local store or read as an e-book.

As I told the students at Otterbein College where I was invited to speak this Fall, this darkness will never end but thanks to Edith Bruck’s persistence, it has been transformed into literature, which will light the way for generations to come. And thanks to the great fortune I have to be the translator of this book, I have met so many of you and heard your impressions of the stories in addition to the impact of Edith Bruck's life on your understanding of the world and what it means to be human. We belong to a community of readers and that's a membership card that I hold dear. How big can we make this community? Help me make it very big.

Thank you!

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'The age I lost everyone and everything' (my lecture at Otterbein)

UPDATED -- SEE VIDEO LINK BELOW Thanks to the amazing English department at Otterbein University in Ohio, I'll be giving a talk about my translation on Thursday.

The title of the talk -- "'The Age I Had Been When I Lost Everyone and Everything': The Life and Works of Edith Bruck" -- is inspired by a line from one of the stories in my translation, This Darkness Will Never End.

I'll also have the distinct privilege of sitting in on a Holocaust literature course that includes the translation as a required text!

Pinch me, pinch me -- the students will be discussing stories with me that I translated!

I plan to discuss what women writers can tell us about the Holocaust, and also various aspects of Edith Bruck's life, including outtakes from our conversation in July when I visited her again at her apartment in Rome.

What a partnership literary translation can be. I feel as though I am one of many 'emissaries' promoting the work of Edith Bruck. There are emissaries in France, emissaries in Spain, even emissaries in Germany. And I'm one of her American emissaries.

UPDATE: I gave a version of this talk at the Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, and thanks to the wonderful librarians there, you can see a recording of it at this link:

https://youtu.be/nUyf5AhRkB0?si=JiBsNG0YrF4_I0Bw

Thanks again to Otterbein!

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What I never say (Liz)

I was thinking recently about my Edith Bruck translation and all of the public readings I’d completed when suddenly I realized I'd only once said aloud something I'm constantly thinking, albeit in such a subtle, subliminal kind of way that it almost transforms thinking into unthinking:

I wish Liz were alive to hear about the translation and the readings.

It’s obvious and with people we know well, we never have to say the obvious. Everyone I know is aware she died two years ago on Sept. 6, 2023, at the age of 54, after a lifetime of illness.

But as wonderful as all of the readings have been and as meaningful as it’s been to meet friends and family throughout this mini book-tour, there’s still no denying that my librarian sister who lived for words and loved books even more than I do would have enjoyed the publication of my first book-length translation and the attendant promotional activities. And I would have enjoyed any pleasure she might have felt over the book (Where ‘enjoyed’ sounds so trite compared to how truly kaleidoscopically awesome it would have been for me to share this moment with her).

She would have asked me 1,000 questions by phone and text and in person -- the deadlines, the reviews, the details about the readings I'd scheduled, the questions posed by the audience. She would have fangirled it up when I told her Elena Ferrante’s translator (Ann Goldstein) attended the reading in New York.

She would have read the translation closely -- far closer than it would seem humanly possible (a reflection of HER dedication to literature, her intense curiosity about the written word -- not the merit of the translation). I like to think she would have appreciated, somewhat grimly, the title that I chose for the translation, which deviates from the original Italian: This Darkness Will Never End.

But wait, there’s more!

And I don’t just mean the profound sadness I feel over her death. I don’t even mean the gaping hole she left – my partner-in-crime for all things literary (and also wicked thoughts you shouldn't say aloud and anything that reflects the ongoing conversation siblings, if they're lucky, share over the course of their lives).

What I mean when I say there's more: if I, who write often and blog regularly and admit that I more or less still openly grieve the loss of my personal Holy Trinity (Mommy, Daddy, Liz) – if I do not say how much I miss my sister in this instance, how many other people are going around this world with a similar ache that's rarely revealed?

It’s like I'm taking a walk or having a conversation with a bee buzzing about my face. 

This bee’s persistent buzzing could be translated as, ‘I wish Liz were here,’ or, ‘I wish I could talk to Liz.' 

OR, ‘I wish Liz could have heard the question the man at Newtonville Books asked.’

Surely everyone is like this!

If love (or actually hope) is the thing with feathers, grief is the one with talons.

And it's no one's fault. We stay silent often because it's more convenient -- for us. There was a lot to say when I gave the readings in the Spring -- why say more?

Yet it’s like a song that gets lodged in your head after you hear it on the radio one day.

Visually it would be quite obvious: in a movie, they would show the character’s face, maybe close up, then there would be a closeup of the thought visualized. Maybe in my case, an image of Liz as she was attached to all the beeping buzzing bleating monitors in the hospital on Long Island before she died. Then my face again, outwardly impassive. Then another shot of Liz, pale, jaundiced, with a temperature of 93, days before the end. Then a shot, maybe, of my sisters and me surrounding Liz on her deathbed after the doctor said, “There’s no hope.” (This was after he’d let us hope in vain, but I digress).

As I write this, I am perfectly calm.

So’s everyone you know who carries around an ache of this kind (or another kind).

The guy I call a jerk during a traffic jam. The annoying father on the sidelines at a soccer game. The local official who makes a decision I disagree with (I don’t mean anyone specifically).

The inner landscape of each of these people could be exactly like my own.

Now I stand at the podium of the conference room at my public library.

Now I begin to say how wonderful it is to read at a library.

Now I say my sister was a librarian.

Now I say how much she would have enjoyed this talk with a smile on my face.

Now I continue with my remarks about the translation and appear perfectly happy to read from it because I am, despite being stuck on a channel of grief (because really and truly, how is it possible this translation was published only after its biggest supporter had died?)

Now I walk out of the library and talk with friends.

Now I go home and eat dinner.

And unless I am an aberration, everyone we know older than, say, 30 years of age, is the same way.

(The percentage of those older than 50 who might feel this way? 500 percent.)

The United States of Grief. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization of the Bereaved. The United Nations of Sorrow.

Or simply what I never say.

And maybe also what YOU never say. All of our dead, all of our regrets, all that's gone. Weighing on us like a millstone and all you can hear is silence.

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Edith Bruck is alive and well!

During our trip to Italy, I was lucky to see many friends I'd known in Florence, but perhaps the most important meeting took place near the Spanish Steps in Rome.

It's the area where Edith Bruck lives -- "my author."

Indeed, Mike even arranged for us to stay near Piazza del Popolo during our visit to Rome so I would be able to to walk to Edith's apartment.

It was our third meeting; the first took place in 2018, shortly after I began translating, "Silvia," one of the signature stories in This Darkness Will Never End.

I spent three glorious hours with Edith this trip. Imagine if your 94-year-old grandmother was a famous writer. Over lunch, she reminisced, she complained, she repeated herself, she smoked! (those thin cigarettes -- the whole time). But she also told me about a story (novel?) she wants to write – but can’t because she’s lost most of her eyesight – and I wish she could write it. It’s called “La Caccia,” and it’s about two journalists who go looking for the last sopravvissuta.

Is that how she feels – like l’ultima sopravvissuta? The last survivor of the Holocaust?

(With only 220,000 survivors left worldwide, according to the Claims Conference, she may well feel that way).

She proudly told me she has a new book coming out this Fall! "L'Amica Tedesca."

She made some very interesting comments, including, “Quando scrivo in Italiano, una parola partorisce un’altra.”  That means: When I write in Italian, one word gives birth to another. She said it to explain that she can’t write now because she can’t see. And since she can’t see, she can’t put down one word and then see where it leads. She said she’s always done her writing by using yellow legal pads propped up on her tummy.

She and Olga (longtime assistant) were very kind and they both told stories about Papa Francesco in great detail. Truly one-of-a-kind to have a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust with such close knowledge of a Catholic Pope! Beautiful friendship. They showed me a special photo book from their visit to Casa Marta, where Pope Francis had lived, that the Vatican created for her (Editor's note: Pope Francis asked to meet Edith Bruck in 2021 to thank her for bearing witness to the Holocaust and to apologize for all the pain she'd suffered).

She told me she thinks about her parents every day -- 80 years after their brutal deaths in Auschwitz (mother) and Dachau (father). She even sang a lullaby in Hungarian that her father used to sing to her!

"Finché vivo, vivono loro ... nei miei libri, nel mio cuore."

As long as I'm alive, she told me, so are they -- in my books, in my heart.

And we spoke of the survivors who rarely if ever break their silence -- like her brother, who witnessed her father's death while they were in the concentration camp and told her what happened but tearfully begged her never to ask again. So she didn't. And she wonders, she told me, what were her father's last words? Was he asking about her? She'll never know.

If your grandmother was a famous writer ... I was spellbound! What a privilege it is to translate another person's words. I sat there combining all of my own identities -- journalist, translator, writer -- and grateful to have entered into a one-of-a-kind relationship with a writer like Edith.

Some of what I blogged about is so frivolous. My memento shrines! Whether the Crazy Drycleaner is still in business (in my old Florentine neighborhood). The barista who said 'Ri-buongiorno.' But this feels momentous.

Yes, there were happy moments, and sad moments during our visit. But mainly proud moments because we were celebrating the publication of "our" new book -- the translation of her first short story collection, This Darkness Will Never End, which has been a milestone for me, and a continuation of the flow of her works into English (three of which have now been published by Paul Dry Books in Philadelphia).

May it continue! I have translated most of her second short story collection, Two Empty Rooms, and even managed to publish an excerpt with Jewish Currents magazine.

My thanks to everyone who has supported this translation! (Including the National Endowment for the Arts). I've been touched by your gestures and interest -- a British colleague of mine at CNN Travel learned about the translation while we were chatting one day over Slack and ordered it from Amazon that day!

I'll continue to talk about the book in the Fall, including a visit to Otterbein College in Ohio where I'll be the guest speaker at a class on Holocaust literature. There will be some other stops, too, which I will detail on the blog and via social media.

The written word, the spoken word, the translated word -- a passport to a world of discovery, understanding and friendship.

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