TE22 Potpourri

This Looming Day (novel excerpt) Antonella Lattanzi Translated from Italian by Stash Luczkiw

Nobody can remain unscathed by reality’s relentless attacks.

We bend into the wind and continue walking. Some can’t take it anymore. At a certain point, as if caught by surprise, they fall. Others continue, heads down in the storm; frozen, they fasten their coats and keep going. Still others learn. To see the sun even when it isn’t there, or watch the clouds closely so as to move at the right time, ready to catch the first ray of light. To warm up. Nobody is more wrong or right than the others. Nobody has won or lost any battle. We all simply tried to live as we could. All of us who have come into the world are heroic. When my mother took my sister and me to live in the neighborhood where we would grow up, the accident had already happened. Just a few months earlier. At the time we arrived, many things were still unclear. The most important things.

[Stash Luczkiw speaks about his work translating this novel, This Looming Day —it’s the November 21, 2021 episode of Women in Translation, available on Trafika Europe Radio (36-minute audio).]

*

Antonella Lattanzi

181