The Fault Line: Traveling the Other Europe, From Finland to Ukraine
“A richly detailed journey into Europe's dark past and vulnerable present.” –Kirkus Reviews
"A glimpse of a hard journey through hard times, highly recommended for those interested in European history and little-known corners of travel."--Melissa Stearns, Franklin Pierce Univ. Lib., Rindge, NH |
Comments"In this hypnotic travelogue, Italian journalist Rumiz weaves a poetic narrative about his 2008 journey along the length of the former Iron Curtain, moving vertically through eastern Europe where the European Union meets its non-member neighbors, from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean, and from Murmansk to Istanbul. Determined, at the age of 60, to go by foot and public transportation, travelling light and enjoying as many encounters and adventures as possible, he and his photographer companion rely the kindness of strangers as they venture far in search of the unknown Europe. There’s an unlikely poetic beauty to his flowery, indulgent prose, in which every moment takes on transcendent meaning. “I get off into a stiff wind impregnated with the melancholy of a Welsh coal mine,” he writes from a town in northeastern Norway. He lovingly describes his escapades and experiences, conjuring up places few tourists ever visit, exposing the dichotomy between the modernity of the EU and the time-lost ways of the old world, and illuminating a much-overlooked region of the world in a thoroughly fascinating manner. Though he’s given to purple prose and overly colorful descriptions, there’s no denying the allure and appeal of his European odyssey." –Publishers Weekly
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Review from The New York Times
"A large dried fish — a gift from a fisherman in a sliver of Norway beyond the Arctic Circle — was the Italian journalist Paolo Rumiz’s unlikely visa into Russia during a journey he took in 2008 down the “zipper” of Eurasia, from Finland to Norway, through Karelia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, all the way south to Odessa. In THE FAULT LINE: Traveling the Other Europe, From Finland to Ukraine (Rizzoli, $27.95), beautifully translated by Gregory Conti, Rumiz recalls that the Russian border agents were “dumbfounded, almost respectful. Standing before them is a 60-year-old man with a business visa and a dried cod. Nothing in their rules and regulations contemplates anything like this.” Indeed, the author’s self-assigned vertical route (longitudinal as opposed to latitudinal) was so extraordinary that no map existed to guide him: “I had to make my own,” he writes, “on a scale of one to one million, transferring pieces of various atlases onto a single strip of paper . . . folded like an accordion.” Idiosyncratic, lushly observed and aglow with philosophical asides, this questing travelogue sheds light on regions you’ve never heard of, where traditions endure from other ages.
While Rumiz doesn’t shy away from reporting industrial blight, Putin-era grievances and regional resentments (he made his trip well before war broke out in Crimea and Ukraine), he rejects the lazy globalist thinking that mistakes a country’s headlines for its society. “To understand which way the world is heading, you have to go to train stations, not to airports,” he argues. It is on land, he believes, in remote villages, woods and lakes, among the sort of simple, ordinary people Dostoyevsky designated “Poor Folk,” that the true life of nations reveals its colorful weft. Woven through his rich warp of reporting and storytelling are conversations with the people he met — reindeer herders, fishermen, peasant farmers — so artless and surprising they feel like fables. “Explain to your readers that it’s a sin not to cultivate the earth,” one woman adjures him, while a gregarious izba dweller on Karelia’s Lake Onega declares, “Bear prints look exactly like human feet!”
Rumiz’s paean to “peripheral places” shows his readers that dystopian modernity isn’t the only story of the present-day eastern borderlands: A fairy tale lurks between the lines, and those who have enough intuition and courage (and perhaps a Russian translator) can discover it for themselves, if they borrow his map."
- LIESL SCHILLINGER
While Rumiz doesn’t shy away from reporting industrial blight, Putin-era grievances and regional resentments (he made his trip well before war broke out in Crimea and Ukraine), he rejects the lazy globalist thinking that mistakes a country’s headlines for its society. “To understand which way the world is heading, you have to go to train stations, not to airports,” he argues. It is on land, he believes, in remote villages, woods and lakes, among the sort of simple, ordinary people Dostoyevsky designated “Poor Folk,” that the true life of nations reveals its colorful weft. Woven through his rich warp of reporting and storytelling are conversations with the people he met — reindeer herders, fishermen, peasant farmers — so artless and surprising they feel like fables. “Explain to your readers that it’s a sin not to cultivate the earth,” one woman adjures him, while a gregarious izba dweller on Karelia’s Lake Onega declares, “Bear prints look exactly like human feet!”
Rumiz’s paean to “peripheral places” shows his readers that dystopian modernity isn’t the only story of the present-day eastern borderlands: A fairy tale lurks between the lines, and those who have enough intuition and courage (and perhaps a Russian translator) can discover it for themselves, if they borrow his map."
- LIESL SCHILLINGER
A Soldier on the Southern Front
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CommentsLussu’s philosophy of war was born in the days he lived through and wrote about. Like so many soldiers, he was against it, and most readers will be persuaded to agree with him.
-Kirkus Reviews |
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The Reach of Rome
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CommentsThis a superb narrative touching on hundreds of minutiae about Ancient Rome that most of us have wondered about but not quite known. The conceit: follow the travels of a Roman minted coin as it moves from hand to hand up and down the empire through all the classes of society. It starts in Londinium and like coins in our modern world has remarkable life, albeit unknowable. Well, Alberto Angela takes care of that for us by imagining a coin and its pilgrimage. Should any coin in my pocket carry such weight and value!
The translation from the Italian is wonderful, idiomatic English prose never reading like a translation but like an original text. Teachers in particular will find this book a great source for the tidbits we love to throw out to perk up our conjugators, decliners, and parsers - Customer review, Amazon.com |
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Bound in Venice
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Comments"In this hymn to books, Marzo Magno delves into the delectable intrigues of Renaissance Venice with a degree of detail that will mesmerize readers."
-La Repubblica |
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The Eyes of Venice
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Comments"This book is a true gem. It grabbed me immediately- especially Bianca's side of the story. Barbero brilliantly transports us through this odyssey of sorts. I also applaud the translator, Gregory Conti, who did a terrific job in bringing true essence of the meaning to light up this story effectively.
The Eyes of Venice will transport you to a place and time like there is no other. I was completely swept away by this!" This review published in the February 2013 print edition of HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW. |
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A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome
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Comments"Many books, documentaries and movies claim to chronicle daily life in ancient Rome, but it's rare to find a narrative so encrusted in detail as this lively offering from an Italian author and television host. . . . Angela's rigorous research and populist style, aided by Conti's seamless translation, should fascinate casual readers as well as dedicated Italophiles."
-Publisher's Weekly Starred Review Voted a Best Book of the Year (2009) by the Kansas City Star and an Indie Bound best-seller. |
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The Templars
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Comments"This is a book we have been waiting for, a terrific, entertaining read backed by solid scholarship..." "fascinating account of the medieval world's most powerful military order, one that continues to captivate te popular imagination."
-Umberto Eco "This concise account, narrated in a brisk, lively style, covers all of the phases and grand themes of the history ot the Temlars. . ." -Alain Demurger |
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Capital and Language
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Comments"This book is fantastic. It's about time that the greater interest shown in workerist / autonomous Marxist thought and politics has translated into publishing some of Christian Marazzi's work in English. If Toni Negri's work provides one with a giant hammer for smashing through the mystifications of class reality, Marazzi conversely provides a set of finely sharpened blades and scalpels for the dissection of processes of class decomposition."
-Amazon Customer Review "The Swiss-Italian economist Christian Marazzi is one of the core theorists of the Italian postfordist movement, along with Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, and Bifo (Franco Berardi). But although his work is often cited by scholars (particularly by those in the field of "Cognitive Capitalism"), his writing has never appeared in English. This translation of his most recent work, Capital and Language (published in Italian in 2002), finally makes Marazzi's work available to an English-speaking audience." -Amazon Customer Review |
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The Water Door
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Comments"Loy creates a crystalline universe that, rather than being limited by the narrative perspective, is widened in often astonishing ways. It is the book's aching and unaswerable questions that speak the loudest: 'How could one bear the idea of such an atrocious punishment for the curiosity of a little girl left home alone? Why hadn't her Guardian Angel come to the rescue, where was he?'"
-Peter Orner in "Forward" June 23, 2006, p. 10. |
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Hot Chocolate at Hanselmann's
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Comments"A remarkable and moving story, beautifully rendered by Gregory Conti in a poetic prose that always seems to strike exactly the right note."
-Breon Mitchell, Professor of Comparative Literature, Indiana University |
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First Words
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Comments". . . It comes many years after the fact, but that in no way diminishes its passion or its quiet power."
-Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World ". . . gulf between a child's steady, daily understanding of the world and the reality of the terrible momentum of hatred astonishes . . ." -Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times "Armed meticulously researched detail, Loy wastes no words, allowing the facts to speak for themselves . . . with profound eloquence." -Peggy Earle, The Virginian Pilot |
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The Banality of Goodness
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Comments"Enrico Deaglio tells the long-ignored, unforgettable story of an unassuming hero of the Holocaust. Gregory Conti's sensitive translation now makes that story available to the English-speaking audience, who will surely read it with fascination."
-William Weaver |
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Additional Book Translations
Elements of a Religious Experience by Aldo Capitini
The Natural Desire for Knowledge by Federico Cesi
The Natural Desire for Knowledge by Federico Cesi
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