Made in Italy: L'ultima notte della nostra vita

I first spotted this absolute gem in Lecce, which was honestly ironic, because I’d downloaded the English audiobook to listen to on the train down to Puglia. I visited two bookstores in Lecce, Mondadori (yes, it’s also a bookstore as well as a publishing group) and La Feltrinelli. Both had L’ultima notte della nostra vita displayed right when you walked in, which, of course, made me immediately need to dissect every piece of it. Luckily, my roommate is super patient and just wandered off to look at other books that interested her. 

When I first saw the cover, I was surprised to see the title changed so drastically. Going from “they both die at the end” to “the last night of our life” is, well, at first it made little sense. Walking back from Mondadori, however, had both me and my roommate thinking. I told her about the Italian title and showed her photos, and we worked together to make a rough translation for the original title, which was "tutti e due muoiono alla fine.” We immediately decided the switch was probably done to make the Italian sound better. Low and behold, our Advanced Italian professor told us three days later about Accademia della Crusca and Italian’s standards for beautiful vs. brutto (literally meaning ugly) sounding words. 

Personally, even though I was surprised by it, I quickly grew to like the Italian title. I think it’s kind of cool how it focuses on night, which is when story both begins and ends. What’s also really interesting is the "della nostra vita" part—it’s both a shared life and singular possessive: “of our life." It's a nod to the boys and how, on their last day, their lives have blended together. The original title is marketing genius, and blunt in a kind way as it's preparing you for a brutal end, but it also keeps you looking towards the ending. You read “They Both Die at the End” as a title and go through the whole book wondering if both main characters can really die. "L'ultima notte della nostra vita" seems to be more concerned about pointing the reader to the themes of reflection, connection, and living. It draws the reader to symbols they may not have paid much attention to during their first read-through. Any title given to a work encompasses the themes and meanings well, but different titles put emphasis on different things. 

This edition was translated by Chiara Reali and published in Italy by Il Castoro HotSpot, an imprint of Editrice Il Castoro (who have also published various translations of DC books, including Gabriel Piccolo and Kami Garcia's Teen Titans graphic novels and Leigh Bardugo's "Wonder Woman"). "L'ultima notte della nostra vita" was published in May 2019, not even two years after the first English edition was released. That's not a lot of time to translate a novel, but there is a high possibility the translation acquisition was made prior to the English release. It's not uncommon.