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 imm...
Foreign finds, publishing notes, and reviews