'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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Nieman: Most Americans don’t pay for news & don’t think they need to

This isn't a blog about the profession that's helped me pay the bills. It's quite the opposite -- a blog to my passions, the ones I've nurtured before and after my day jobs, be they newspaper reporter, NPR station reporter or adjunct prof at my alma mater. 

But it's not really an accident that I became a journalist, even if I was reluctant at first (and now earn my money in additional other ways like teaching). I grew up in a house where The New York Times was delivered every day to our doorstep -- and woe if it wasn't there on time, because my father would throw a fit! He liked to take the paper with him to the government lab where he worked so he could peruse the headlines over lunch, in the era long before smartphones (obviously).

When he returned home in the evening, he would remove the newspaper from his briefcase so that after dinner -- after my poor mother had slaved over the meal, and then cleaned up the kitchen, with little help from her wayward fourth daughter -- she could sit in her rocking chair in the living room to read the news while she smoked a cigarette (or two).

I can remember talking to her in that very spot about news articles and historical moments connected to the Watergate era, the Holocaust, the Revolutionary War and many other topics (she was a history buff).

My parents were so Catholic, it was painful! I once made the mistake of suggesting I might become a Protestant, and with a tone of voice that could freeze mighty rivers, my father replied icily, "You can do that but it's not the true path." 

Yet the words my parents quoted the most issued not from the Holy Bible but rather the not-so-holy New York Times (which my mother insisted was anti-Catholic, if not simply anticlerical, though it did nothing to slow down her news consumption and I don't think she was right).

When I reported my one and only news feature story for The New York Times, my father clipped the article from the Business section and taped it up on the wall of his den in New Jersey ('one and only,' only because they've rejected subsequent pitches -- I'm always available for The Gray Lady when she needs me). I suspect he didn't really think I was a journalist until that moment.

My aunts and uncles on my father's side have also always read the newspaper. Some of them are also masters of the NYT crossword! (Such smart people from Bayonne, NJ!)

In other words, as far as I'm concerned, if The Times reports it, it's news, I should know about it and that's that. 

I've raised Leo to read the newspaper as well (as I mentioned in a personal essay that I published -- pinch me! -- with The New York Times, he and I used to begin our days when he was a toddler by looking for photos of Pres. Obama in the newspaper). We now send the dog out to get the paper every morning, and over breakfast, Leo at least looks at the headlines. He also has had a subscription to The Week Junior for several years (thanks to my Aunt Marianne).

I know he will get his news from multiple sources -- he already listens to podcasts and adores "The Daily Show" (not only for the sexual references and frat-like tone, though that helps.) The important thing is that he knows the news, seeks out news reports and understands it's vital in a Democracy.

All of this to say, I am apoplectic about a recent report from Harvard's venerable journalism institute, Nieman Lab, about a study conducted by the Pew Research Center on the news consumption habits of Americans now.

As Pew puts it, Americans have a "complicated relationship" with news, with many surveyed saying they let news "find them," because of course, these days, we are bombarded with information via social media.

But as Nieman summarizes it in its headline, most Americans don't pay for news and don't think they need to. Of the people surveyed, an astonishing 83 percent said they do not spend money to receive news (through subscriptions, memberships or donations, according to Pew). 

RED ALERT

RED ALERT

RED ALERT

In a Democracy, we must know what's happening. We must know what the government is up to. And we need people who are paid to pay attention to what's happening and what the government is up to.

It's helpful if the journalists have steady staff positions. It's not like producing a widget -- a reporter may have to spend hours upon hours talking to people or attending meetings or traveling far and wide to gather information in person before he or she is ready to publish an actual story. It could take days or even months.

And yes, a journalist may have to speak to people who do not want their names published in order to find out what's really happening.

We know from Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, and of course the wicked Epstein file scandal that the government sometimes takes steps to hide information.

I've tried to avoid asking people to spend money on my behalf -- even with my Edith Bruck translation, I gave my author copies to the people closest to me because I didn't want to burden them by asking them to buy the book (now I'm just bugging them to write a review on Amazon).

But I'm asking you as an American to support a news organization. Not necessarily CNN, my news organization, but any news organization that provides solid, original reporting.

It could even be a Substack -- Roger Sollenberger is doing solid reporting on the Epstein files.

Journalism has to be a paid activity that people seek out for work and we news consumers have to pay for it. The advertising model for newspapers has collapsed. The work that good newspapers do, however, still needs to be underwritten, supported, discussed and valued.

When you turn on CNN to see what's happening in Iran, the people explaining and delivering the news earn a good salary so that they can tell you the latest developments accurately. They cannot do a good job if they are not paid enough to do so -- if they have to take on second jobs or can only publish their work on a personal website after being laid off or if they cut corners because they are not paid enough to do careful reporting.

Other organizations worth your time and patronage:

The Boston Globe

The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Guardian

The New Yorker

The Atlantic

Smithsonian (not breaking news but important investigative journalism)

National Geographic (not breaking news but important investigative journalism)

The Morning Call (Allentown)

Local NPR stations (including WHYY, WABE, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WBUR and Connecticut Public)

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Last but not least, if you have a young person in your life who would benefit from AND ACTIVELY USE a subscription to CNN or The New York Times, please get in touch with me.

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Jeanne journals

I don't like it when the word 'journal' is used as a verb. Let's journal about this. OR: She spent the afternoon journaling...

It feels a bit like saying, 'I crochet' ... or ... 'I like scrapbooking.' Or, 'Excuse me while I get ready for an afternoon of canning.' (I know people enjoy these kinds of activities, but not me. Of course, for some of these people, the idea of writing in a physical journal would probably cause the same reaction).

But it's what I do -- a lot. I journal. In fact, I spend a good deal of time writing in my journal, reading what I've written in my journal or even simply admiring the physical appearance of my journals. What I am doing, really, is gazing at a kind of security blanket the journal represents -- when all goes awry, I can write it down in the journal. Or, whenever I have a thought about something I want to do, I must do, I should do: I can write it in my journal and the thought is preserved. Looking at a journal from last year is a little like looking at my favorite sweater. I've also found the journal to be not only a confidant who receives my inner thoughts but also one who accompanies me on my life's journey. In other words, it’s often a document of what I’ve achieved.

I mainly use my journals to write (as opposed to draw or log information like the number of miles one has run) but I also attach ephemera to some of the pages -- drawings by Leo, receipts from vacation stops, post-it notes destined for posterity, et al -- so they sometimes actually do have the air of scrapbooks. They capture a moment of my life. (I occasionally post diary entries on this blog. I also occasionally write diary entries in Italian).

As I've mentioned here before, I do keep a digital journal (an extensive one that’s composed of two dozen Word documents that span more than a decade), but I have a 13-year-old, which means two things to me:

*I don't want him to see me hunched over a computer 24/7 or constantly glancing at my phone, even if my purpose is to log a thought

*...And that's because: I want him to understand what I do and if he can see me writing with a pen in my journal from across the room or transcribing a translation into my journal or even stapling something onto a page of the journal that I want to keep, he may be able to understand what his writer-editor-translator-adjunct mom does for a living. (Maybe. Alternately, he might just think I twirl my hair for a living.)

What I'm Reading: Nobody's Girl

Reviewing books is one of many tasks I've taken on since dedicating myself to writing more than a decade ago. 

But I typically review Italian works that have been translated into English or other works of literary fiction.

So the short review I'm about to publish here doesn't necessarily mesh with the thousands of posts about Italy or translation or what I bought at Rizzoli, say. And the book in question doesn't sit naturally next to books about the Holocaust that I've been reading over the past few years as I translated Edith Bruck's work.

But it does reflect me as a person who knows there are some distinct ways that being a woman can differ from being a man (even if men, too, can be victims of rapists).

The posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, by Virginia Giuffre is the story of how Jeffrey Epstein abused countless numbers of girls like the author.

As I mentioned in my 2025 reading roundup, I not only read the book to make a point, I BOUGHT it -- in hardback -- to make a "sales" point: This topic is important and I'll show you how important with my money.

(I'll also show you -- whoever you are -- that the topic is so sensitive that I hid the book under my pillow because I didn't want my son to see it, even though he unfortunately knows all about Epstein. All teens and tweens who happen to catch "Saturday Night Live" or "The Daily Show" or who may read headlines on the front page of The New York Times, as Leo, my son, often does, know about Epstein).

Much of what I could tell you about the book is well-known -- the most-reported aspect, I suppose, involves the Royal Family.

But what I took away from the book is the following: many, many people had occasion to observe Jeffrey Epstein with young girls.

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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The best magazine you've never read (unless you're 12)

When “The Week Junior” arrives in the mail, my 12-year-old son sits down immediately to read it cover to cover. One quick look at its smartly-written articles and eye-catching graphics, I see why he loves it so much. As a former newspaper reporter, I am thrilled at his interest!

The weekly publication, which debuted in 2020, is aiming to instill a habit in young readers that’s already a bygone one for many of their parents. Its very existence gives me hope for the future of journalism, and it doesn’t dumb anything down; coverage has included such high-brow topics as Henry Kissinger’s visit to China.

The magazine is so good that I've pitched feature articles about it but haven't been successful so I am writing about it here (in fact, I started this post more than a year ago, hence the reference to a 12-year-old son. He's now 13!). 

Just like a news magazine or newspaper, The Week Junior covers a little bit of everything, and there are always calls for reader submissions of photos or ideas. Coverage includes tween and teen-friendly topics such as Taylor Swift and the World Cup, in addition to hard news about politics and world events.

I'm writing about it now so that the magazine can attract more subscribers and keep going. It’s hitting newsstands at a time when scores of magazines and newspapers for grownups have closed. I hope it's successful longterm because it's been a wonderful gift for Leo (courtesy of my one-of-a-kind Aunt Marianne).

And of course, the next generation of news consumers needs to be nurtured.

Journalism is at an inflection point and our national digital addiction has also reached crisis proportions. The Week Junior is attempting to instill the habit of reading the news in the next generation at a time when adults as well as children are giving up on print publications. 

I am blogging about this magazine because I want the world to know about it, even if I've been unsuccessful pitching a feature article about it. Maybe another writer will see my post and write about the magazine. Or a parent will subscribe.

This is a magazine any parent would be proud to have in the home, and which furnishes children not only with information about our world but with curiosity about it.

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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

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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.

What I'm Reading: The Art of X-Ray Reading

Writers are readers, right?

They have to be, and the author of the book, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing, does an amazing job of showing the fruits we enjoy when we read very closely.

Roy Peter Clark examines work by James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Zora Neale Hurston and Joan Didion, among others. Not summaries, not book reports but a deep examination of word choice, and how authors "create" meaning through the particular order of words.

Much of it is work I've read but perhaps not in this way or with the particular lens he employs. And besides, a short story like Joyce's "The Dead" is ripe for re-reading, savoring, deciphering, dissecting, all of which you'll find in the chapter dedicated to Joyce. As you can imagine, he examines the final lines of the story where words are repeated and he talks about the deft use of repetition here -- in other contexts, it could be something to avoid but the conscious re-use of particular words underscores the paralysis experienced by the protagonist, Gabriel Conroy.

In the back, Clark compiled a list of a long list of great sentences from a wide variety of works.

I actually read this book in 2025. I've been meaning to finish this post for a while but other commitments came first.

Before I conclude, let me say something about one section that I especially recommend: his analysis of the Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming." I've published the first stanza in another blogpost but it's worth reproducing it again in part, especially in light of the author's focus on the word gyre, which he says is an unusual word:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre//The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Clark gets into the nitty gritty of the word's Greek origins, offers synonyms (vortex, maelstrom) and also notes it comes at the end of a sentence that begins with the repetition of a present participle -- unusual. A poem written to reflect a period of political turbulence, completely embodied in one word.

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To the ends of the word...: The Bishop's Bedroom by Piero Chiara

I am not the only one who enjoyed The Bishop's Bedroom! Happy to share this link to a review of the work by Piero Chiara, which was translated magnificently by Jill Foulston.

Here's the link to the blogpost with the review on a blog called To the Ends of the Word:

To the ends of the word...: The Bishop's Bedroom by Piero Chiara: The Bishop's Bedroom by Piero Chiara Translated by Jill Foulston

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A poem for today? The Second Coming by Yeats

(First stanza, only. How prescient W. B. Yeats was!)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

 (Thanks to the Poetry Foundation. Also thanks to Roy Peter Clark for his wonderful analysis of this poem in his book, The Art of X-Ray Reading). (Also: photo courtesy of me! From our 2024 trip to Ireland, which included a stop at his grave).

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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I eloped "with" Italy 30 years ago

How odd to conclude that among the loves of your life is an entire country, in addition to the real loved ones, like Leo.

I am, of course, talking about Italy, a country that for me is nothing less than a shaman, no safer than those Sirens who ensnared Odysseus, and more akin to a being that enthralls (enchants/bewitches) me than a landmass. Also: a twin who lives mainly in my mind but who nonetheless follows me wherever I go.

And it's been following me for a long time: 30 years ago this year, I left America to live in Italy.

Dates. Anniversaries. Milestones. The accumulation of years. I dwell on these notions a lot. But because I've been busy promoting This Darkness Will Never End, my first book-length translation, I haven't had a chance to reflect much on the fact that three decades ago this year, I left for Italy. 

Thus began my expat life -- the years, for better or for worse, against which all the subsequent years would be judged.

Thirty years ago, I eloped to -- and with -- Italy. And 'eloped' is the right word because the transaction lacked the solid planning of a wedding. I escaped with my paramour and let all the naysayers (who wisely said, 'You don't have a job...') be damned. All I knew was that, following my graduation from Wesleyan, I'd secured through a friend a summer "job" as a tutor to a bunch of rich Romans whose children attended an American school in Rome. And then I would go on to Pisa where I would be the guest of a doctor whose cousin worked in my department at Wesleyan.

After that, who knew? Not I, but I didn't care. I only knew one thing: my days of living in one language were over. Once I'd tasted bilingual life, it was the only one for me. As I mentioned in a previous post, once you've heard and understood Italians speaking their native language, I don't think you can go back to the English-only world. I couldn't. 

Before the year was out, I migrated to Florence, a city I'd circled warily. It's hard to believe this, but I was on Team Siena back then. I'd spent a semester in Siena as a student and found Florence dirty and chaotic whenever I visited.

But one Sunday, the doctor who was hosting me in Pisa had to work all day at her hospital in Florence and she invited me to come along. The city enchanted me! Perhaps because she dropped me off somewhere other than the dodgy train station or due to the quiet hum of a weekend but I can remember crossing one of the bridges that span the Arno and succumbing to the magic of Florence.

Lasciate ogne speranza: for me, at that point, I could abandon all "speranza" -- hope -- of ever falling out of love with Florence or Italy. Like the author of those famous words, I would spend the rest of my life thinking about enchanting, beguiling, occasionally wicked Florence.

As I've said before, if my life were a novel, I might call my departure for Italy the “inciting incident.” It followed that semester abroad where I'd resolved to truly immerse myself in the culture, and being fluent in Italian became an obsession—a lonely one, since I often forced myself to forfeit outings with other Americans so I could instead practice Italian. 

What's ironic: I’d struggled to learn the language in my freshman year of college, but once in Italy, nothing short of fluency would satisfy me. In an essay I wrote for The Millions, I noted that one of the first words I learned on the ground in Italy was the verb scherzare. "It means 'to joke' and is indispensable for following almost any conversation with Italians. During a trip I took to Sicily, a Palermo policeman warned me about strange men near the station by yanking on the skin below his eye with his finger, and uttering a single word, occhio, which simply means 'eye.' I was hooked," I wrote. Mastering Italian became a pursuit not unlike bedding men or getting drunk.

I had very little money when I lived in Italy, and no real career to speak of. In fact, when I returned to the States, I was at loose ends (since I hadn't been building a professional foundation, or so I thought). I can recall visiting the beach with my sister, who uttered an immortal line about my lack of a real job when I lived in Italy, which caused a bit of a stir between us at the time.

She wasn't wrong. But she may not have realized what Dad had intuited. Knowing not only that he was a world traveler but also that his library included books by many authors who made the most of their ex-pat years, I believe my father sent me off to Italy so that I could truly live, so that I could collect the kinds of experiences that fiction and other writing spring from.

Of course him being him (a contrarian), he had an unforgettable comment when I decided to return home from Italy: "It's all downhill from here." I was 25!

It took me many years to get over leaving Italy. Perhaps because I moved from a medieval tower in the center of Florence to an apartment in a car-infested Atlanta suburb. I can recall crying in the car in Atlanta whenever we listened to Italian music (and forget watching Italian movies -- total sob fest).

Eventually I forced myself to develop interests in other countries, such as Mexico, which we visited quite a few times. I even allowed myself to study Spanish, although it felt as though I were betraying my true love, Italian.

And then when I'd finally moved on, I allowed myself after many years to return to Italy, only to discover that I still wanted what I shouldn't want: to live in two places and two languages, which is to say, live in Italy and the US. The compromise? I live in two languages by translating Italian literature.

The experience of living in Italy was so rich, it's as though everything that came after paled. Luckily, I became a mother and that feeling dissipated because the experience of being a mother is much more powerful than adoring a culture or way of life.

But the experience of living there continues to shape my life today (and the mementos that have proliferated throughout my house. It dominates what I read, and it spurred me to translate, and it influences where I choose to vacation (and my dreams for retirement, which I recently concluded should begin with a year's wandering through Italy).

I continue to marvel over Italians and the Italian way of life. At one point during our travels last summer, I developed an obsession with the Roma-Viterbo train line, which is separate from Trenitalia. As I wrote here, it's not entirely odd: our apartment in Rome overlooked one of the stations on the line. And when I am in Italy, I am immersed in "my beat," which I define as the ordinary aspects of Italian life, the parts of Italian life that an average Italian contends with. I found it reminded me of the PATH trains that link lower Manhattan to New Jersey inasmuch as it's both local and separate. They are like an alt subway line, which is slightly odd. If you were a traveler to NYC, you could mistake them for the actual subway system, no?

And I continue to silently beg Italians to keep being Italian (especially as I note developments such as a Starbucks coffee location on Via del Corso in Florence. Ma dai! Non ci voleva).

So my dear Italy, I'm very happy we eloped all those years ago! I'll remain true to you until my dying day.

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For CNN Travel: why can't America have more piazzas?

Piazza Navona. Piazza Santo Spirito. Campo dei Fiori. Piazza Duomo (Milan). Just some of the piazzas I love. 

And since I now work as a contract editor for CNN Travel, I recently published an article about how much Americans have come to love public squares in Europe -- in increasing numbers, too -- only to return home disappointed that most of our towns and cities don't have these wonderful outdoor communal living rooms.

My photo editor at CNN found a gorgeous photo of the epic piazza in Lucca that has the distinction of being one of the only fully-enclosed piazzas in Italy (fully-walled, in other words; you enter through arches/porticos, not a road) (click on the link for the story to see it). I'm using here a photo of Piazza San Carlo in Torino, which is also dazzling. I took it several years ago on a whirlwind, solo trip to Italy on the occasion of the Salone del Libro -- Italy's largest book fair.

You can read the story here:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/19/travel/europe-public-squares-american-development

Other CNN bylines:

You can also read an article I wrote for CNN Travel about the many Canadian travelers who are no longer visiting the US here.

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Meeting Donatella Di Pietrantonio at Rizzoli this year

At an event at Rizzoli in Manhattan earlier this year, I asked Donatella Di Pietrantonio to autograph one of her books that I love -- L'Arminuta (English: A Girl Returned) and when I told her I did some translation work, she gushed over the efforts and mission of literary translators (I do, too, largely because I am still trying to find my footing in this essential branch of literary philanthropy). Take a look at her message: "A Jeanne, grazie per il grande lavoro che fa." Translation: "To Jeanne, thank you for the important work that you do."

The book is a novel set in the author's native Abruzzo, and Di Pietrantonio is one of a wave of Southern Italian women authors who have emerged in the literary landscape remade by Elena Ferrante.

I reviewed the translation for the Kenyon Review and as I noted in the review, Di Pietrantonio "grapples with the holy trifecta of human emotions (and thus, fiction): love, longing and loss." It is the stunning story of an adoption undone but so much more than that. To quote the review again:

For much of this novel, published in Italy in 2017, the narrator is caught between two mothers. Di Pietrantonio often figuratively—and skillfully—sets one mother against the other: “Every Saturday the mother in the town was obliged to give me a small sum, which came by some means or other from the mother on the coast.”

No surprise, the author is a class act! How lovely it was to meet her, at a conference dedicated to Italian literature (which, hint hint, I hope Rizzoli and the Italian Cultural Institute will host again in 2026).

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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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Ginzburg, sempre Ginzburg (What I'm reading)

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!