The European Literature Network has just released The Italian Riveter, an incredible resource for lovers of literature from Italy.
This is the tenth special issue of The Riveter, previous ones having focused on the literary output of Romania, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, the Baltics, queer authors, Russia, Poland and the Nordic countries. Click here to view them – they are free to download. Printed copies are available to order from newsstand.co.uk.
The Italian Riveter was launched at London Book Fair on 5 April and at the Italian Cultural Institute, London on 7 April 2022. The Italian Cultural Institutes of London, Dublin and Edinburgh sponsored its publication. ‘Why Italy? Why an Italian Riveter?’ Rosie Goldsmith, founder of the European Literature Network, answers those question in her introduction. Rosie, editor West Camel and design & production editor Anna Blasiak are indefatigable champions of literature in translation.
Contributors include many well-known novelists, poets, translators and critics from Italy, the UK and far beyond. So, The Italian Riveter offers the pleasure both of a superb read in its own right and of discovering new books to delve into. You’ll find exclusive interviews with the likes of Jhumpa Lahiri, Gianrico and Francesco Carofiglio and Tim Parks. Anna Blasiak delves into Italian poetry and Barry Forshaw into crime fiction. Paolo Grossi of New Italian Books talks about promotion abroad, and Diego Marani about the Italian ‘cultural mind’. Maria Teresa Carbone focuses on women’s writing, and Enrica Maria Ferrara specifically on Ferrante Studies.
Distinguished translators from Italian provide overviews of different genres, as well as reviews and extracts of books. For example, Howard Curtis covers lost Italian classics ripe for re-discovery, while Clarissa Botsford writes about the ‘new Italians’, including Cristina Ali Farah, Igiaba Scego and Nadeesha Uyangoda; Shaun Whiteside tells us about translating from Italian, and Ann Goldstein about translating Elena Ferrante; Denise Muir and Antonella Ranieri discuss children’s literature and children’s picture books, respectively; Katherine Gregor explains what differentiates the Italian historical novel and curates the section on untranslated Italian fiction.
Every section includes different contributors’ reviews of works in the relevant genre. I was delighted to write about Lia Levi’s Tonight is Already Tomorrow, a work of historical fiction based on true events. The Italian Riveter is interspersed with pieces in the ‘Postcard from…’ series, to cover the literature of different regions, reflecting the diversity which characterises the peninsula. I was asked to write the ‘postcard’ from my native Puglia, and hugely enjoyed reading the ones from other parts of Italy.
Are you looking for great book recommendations? Or maybe researching contemporary Italian literature? Whatever your reason for landing on this post, you’ll enjoy and treasure The Italian Riveter.
So, what to consider when reviewing a work of fiction? Here are my top ten tips.
Begin with a gripping line or paragraph which conveys your overall opinion. It could be phrased as (a) a statement or (b) a question. As an alternative, you could begin with (c) a quote from the book which encapsulates its themes. An example of each:
The title says it all: smoking kills – though in the case of this novel, the victim is not the smoker but those he kills (‘and not through passive smoking,’ he clarifies) in order to enjoy the pleasures of a cigarette. We’re firmly in humour noir territory: the book’s incisive, satirical take on modern-day life offers a succession of laugh-out-loud moments.[1]
What might drive a left-wing intellectual to espouse xenophobic views and defend the indefensible? How might the community around him react? How would you react if he were your father? In Autopsy of a Father, Pascale Kramer poses uncomfortable questions and tests your tolerance of disquiet.[2]
‘“Fate,” said Arthur. “The capital letter F. But chance is a powerful force, and suddenly you acquire a Fate that was never assigned to you. Some kind of accidental fate. It happens in a flash.”’[3]
Give us a reason why we should read the book / why it should spark our curiosity
E.g.: One of the most original novels I’ve read in a long time, The Core of the Sun is set in an alternative present – in the “Eusistocratic Republic of Finland”.[4]
In your plot summary, tell us about the protagonist(s)’ approach to the key issue/conflict/mystery
E.g.: Caterina’s process of reconstruction involves acquiring that part of herself which she left to her twin. […] But as she learns to take care of their elderly mother, of Olivia’s son and of a young neighbour who has lost her little girl, she understands that it was too simple for her and others to rely on Olivia.[5]
What questions does the story raise?
Does it interrogate and challenge any stereotypes? Or the opposite?
Does it prompt us to read relevant books?
An example of questions raised: Raimo leaves readers to judge: was there any love at all on his part, or only desire, fetishism, possession and the drive to dominate, self-justified with theword ‘love’? Can any of these ever coexist with love, or do they often taint it, but only to hardly perceptible and therefore unrecognised degrees?[6]
Tell us how the book makes you feel
What, if anything, will move us? Or amuse us, etc?
What causes that response? It could be an episode, or the language, or…
E.g.: It would be incorrect to infer too much neatness from the symmetries in the book’s structure. The subtle play of balance and counterbalance constantly engages the reader, while offering a reassuring framework to explore the chaos of complex issues with no easy answers.[7]
What might this book add to readers’ lives?
E.g.: ‘A Whole Life’ attests to the enduring value of just this kind of ‘lightness’ – a lightness of touch which offsets the depth of Robert Seethaler’s themes, distilling them into thoughts and images that linger in the reader’smind.[8]
Select your quotes carefully
The ones you choose should illustrate your points
Try to find one or two that are representative of the book as a whole
E.g.: He possesses the ability to capture the joy of the earth warmed by the sun under his “night-damp feet”, the wood which “had stored the warmth of the last days of summer and smelled of dry moss and resin”, and the coolness of a flat rock on which he lies down.[9]
Analyse the author’s (and the translator’s, if it’s a foreign work in English) treatment of the most relevant elements of writing, such as:
individuality of voice (style, language…)
characterisation
sense of place
structure
E.g.:
The writing alternates wit and humour with darkness and melancholy, dramatic tension with aphorisms, the real with the surreal, poignant observation with optimism. The rhythm of the prose is thus pleasantly engaging, and the plot suspenseful – not least due to some ethically questionable choices on the protagonist’s part – but more compelling still is the development of the themes over the story’s arc. Antoine Laurain succeeds in creating a first-person narrator who is whimsically and yet realistically unaware of the full depth of his unhappiness until he has distanced himself from it.[10]
Authors of intimate stories that reflect the course of a country’s historical fortunes face a challenge: to create fictional protagonists we’ll care about without their writerly imagination being clipped by the magnitude and details of nationally significant events. Aareleid deftly overcomes that challenge, giving us believable human beings through the eyes of…[11]
You can mention relevant novels or short stories by other writers
E.g.: The themes may bring to mind Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but it would be a disservice to both authors to insist on comparisons.[12]
Ensure your review’s ending addresses your central idea
E.g.: This is a book which challenges you to work hard and amply rewards you for it: a gripping read in its own right, and fiction that enhances our engagement with the world we inhabit.[13]
It has been a pleasure and an honour to share some reflections with friends of the Italian Cultural Institute, London. Faced with the heaviness of our times, I find it helpful to think of the lens offered by Italo Calvino’s concept of ‘lightness of thoughtfulness’, which has little in common with the habitual definition of lightness. Calvino is speaking of its value in literature, but, as invariably happens with the best of writing, it overcomes those boundaries and spills over into life by sparking trains of thought. Isn’t the written page, after all, a response to reality? So, here is the article for ICI London’s ‘Stay Safe’, a series which has brought the light of fellow authors’ questions and reflections to my days during the COVID-19 crisis. Mine is #46, so there are many more if you’d like to take a look.
Below is an image of the article. You can click here to read it on the website of the Italian Cultural Institute. The article features also in the anthology Stay Safe, an e-book published by the Institute and featuring 49 Italian and British writers, including Sandro Veronesi, Paolo Nelli, Hanif Kureishi and Boyd Tonkin.
Image credits:
From Italian Cultural Institute London Facebook page and website.
Where to go for advice on some great German reads? You can turn to the excellent New Books in German if you’re looking for new titles. And now there’s also an amazing compendium: The German Riveter. It covers fiction and poetry written since the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago, as well as literature from the Nazi period (Heinz Rein, Hans Fallada, Timur Vermes), poetry of the Holocaust, the ‘Krimi’, children’s books, memoir ‘snapshots’ of 1989 and English-language extracts of untranslated works. Click here for FREE access to the full text, illustrated by the great Axel Scheffler.
The German Riveter was produced by the European Literature Network with support from Arts Council England, the Goethe Institut, the German Embassy in London, the British Council, Frankfurt Book Fair and the British Library. It’s the seventh edition of The Riveter, previous ones having focused on writing from Poland, Russia, the Nordic countries, the Baltics, Switzerland and queer writing from Europe. The launch took place at the British Library: EuroLitNet founder Rosie Goldsmith interviewed authors Durs Grünbein, Julia Franck and Nino Haratischvili and their translators Karen Leeder, Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin, all of whom read out in German and English from their work.
Rosie Goldsmith presenting the Riveting Germans event at the British Library
Speakers and interviewer at Riveting Germans event at British Library – Nino Haratischvili reading
It was a privilege for me to be asked to review ‘F’, a novel by Daniel Kehlmann which I can highly recommend. You can find out why on pp. 64-65 of The German Riveter.
The fall of the Berlin Wall is a subject which began interesting me years before it occurred. The potential for it was the focus of my International Relations dissertation in 1986. I first visited East Berlin in 1984. I recall especially well the visit to the Pergamon Museum, not only thanks to its astonishing contents but also because of the conversation with a museum attendant who told me how lucky I was to be there one moment, and wherever else I might wish, the next. The subsequent year, while completing my degree at POLSIS, I was fortunate to be awarded a residency at the West German foreign ministry’s Research Institute for Political Studies; it enabled me to conduct field research into the potential for German reunification, including interviews with personalities across the political spectrum. So, for me the experience of seeing the Wall coming down in 1989 was charged with layers of emotion.
Pergamon Museum, 1984
Pergamon Museum, 2011
By mere coincidence, the Wall plays a large role in one of my favourite reads of 2019, Deborah Levy’s The Man Who Saw Everything: it is integral to the plot but also serves as a metaphor, as a recurring motif… This is a novel to treasure, the kind which rewards you with fresh discoveries as you return to it.
So, no shortage of suggestions here if you’re looking for some great books! Happy reading!
The July 2019 edition of the European Literature Network‘s #Riveting Reviews is out today. My review is of Veronica Raimo’s “The Girl at the Door” (4th Estate). Bold stylistic choices give a sharp edge to this novel. This is unsettling, thought-provoking work.
The Girl at the Door is in tune with the concerns of the #MeToo movement, but Raimo began writing the novel years before its rise. The book is relevant also to other burning issues. It highlights the question of the failure to see clearly and to seek dialogue not only at a personal level but at a societal one, especially in the age of social media, when views of history and the present seem to polarise around extremes.
This is a book which challenges you to work hard and which amply rewards you for it: a gripping read in its own right, and fiction that enhances our engagement with the world. Highly recommended.
Recently the European Literature Network published The Swiss Riveter, a compendium of writing about contemporary fiction, poetry and memoir from Switzerland. It contains essays on Swiss literature’s richness and diversity, as well as reviews and extracts, including an exclusive English excerpt of Peter Stamm’s The Gentle Indifference of the World (to be published this year in Michael Hoffman’s translation) and an essay by Swiss-British writer Alain de Botton.
My review of Pascale Kramer’s Autopsy of a Father (Bellevue Literary Press, 2017) appears on pp. 56-57. Kramer won the Grand Prix Suisse de Littérature in 2017 for her oeuvre. Autopsy of a Father is a powerful novel for our times: it tackles xenophobia, racism and nationalism. You can access the review here.
The European Literature Network promotes literature in translation. The Swiss Riveter was produced with support from Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK, Arts Council England and ELit Literature House Europe. Sections of it are now available also in digital form here.
This is the fifth of the European Literature Network’s Riveters. The first was devoted to literature from Poland, on the occasion of the 2017 London Book Fair’s Polish focus. The second, on literature from Russia, coincided with ELNet’s Russian events at the British Library. In The Nordic Riveter of October 2017, five countries were represented: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. The fourth covered the Baltics, the focus of the 2018 London Book Fair.
The Polish Riveter
The Russian Riveter
The Nordic Riveter
The Baltics Riveter
Image credits:
Images courtesy of The European Literature Network.
It’s a pleasure to reblog, below, the Women Writers Network’s Favourite Reads of 2018. They’re recommendations of books authored by women, chosen by WWN founder members among the ones read in 2018. They’ve been collated and beautifully put together by our fellow network member Helen Taylor, author of “The Backstreets of Purgatory”. Thank you, Helen!
For those of you who may not know, I’m part of the Women Writers Network. We are a group of volunteers who run a Twitter account dedicated to supporting and promoting women writers. It is a brilliant place to discover new writers or to be reminded of old favourites, to share blog posts, writing tips, and get support on those days when you might be flagging.
Here, some of our founder members give their recommendations of their books of the year. Unlike most end of year lists, the books didn’t have to have been published in 2018. It means that some old favourites or the new discoveries that may have been published several years ago can get a mention too. Here are our recommendations (in alphabetical order by contributor).
Gail Aldwin, poet, short fiction writer and novelist
I loved reading My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Stroud this…
Riveting Reads: on Simonetta Agnello Hornby and Nicola Gardini
The European Literature Network champions international literature – if you aren’t already aware of its activity, do check out its website.
Every month, its Riveting Reviews section features reviews of (mainly) European literature – mostly of works recently translated into English. It also offers a Riveting Reads section, consisting of brief (only a few lines long) recommendations of a wider range of books, including fiction and non-fiction not yet available in English translation, as well as texts published years ago.
My recent full-length ‘Riveting Review’ was of Antoine Laurain’s ‘Smoking Kills’ (see here). My July ‘Riveting Reads’ are focused on works by Italian authors: ‘The Little Virtues’ by Natalia Ginzburg; ‘Nessuno Puo’ Volare’ by Simonetta Agnello Hornby; and ‘Le 10 Parole Latine che Raccontano il Nostro Mondo’ by Nicola Gardini. I hope you’ll enjoy reading about them and about all the other intriguing titles chosen by my fellow contributors.
Image credits:
Image of ‘Riveting Reads’ from the European Literature Network website.
My latest piece for The European Literature Network‘s #RivetingReviews is on Antoine Laurain’s “Smoking Kills”, recently translated into English by Louise Rogers-Lalaurie for Gallic Books.
This short novel grips the reader with sharp satire and with a plot hovering between the realistic and the hilariously bizarre. French humour noir at its best.
I loved reading My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Stroud this…
Valeria Vescina 