Translators Blues

Franco Nasi has created a character, an Italian naïf, who reflects movingly and humorously on the oddity of what he finds as he visits America and travels round his home country, disclosing as he does so the fundamental strangeness of the world when it is viewed with fresh eyes. If there is melancholy, then this stems from the fact that however successful the description of the world, it is bound to go awry when it is required to pass into another language. At once story and reflection, essay and narrative, this cahier by one of Italy’s most celebrated authors on translation is a celebration of what it is in the space between languages that both unites and divides us.