Carmela's Books

The following report was a project for the course Italian Art and Culture for USAC Viterbo's Spring 2022 session. Books and literature have historically had extraordinary impacts on human culture and life. When looking at authors like William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri, one can really start to understand the influences storytelling can have on language and ways of life. Shakespeare alone gave English countless new metaphors, concepts, and phrase, and Dante is unignorable in Italy, still thriving and alive even in the smallest of towns. But their influence did not happen out of nowhere. These men did not write their works, their poems and essays, without having a way to show them to the public, without having a way to sell them. Even before the advent of the printing press, books had an industry, a market, with writers, poets, calligraphers, artists, paper craftsmen, and patrons making up a majority of those involved in the process. In modern times, this has developed into a co...

As a major bestseller and BookTok megahit, it’s no surprise that V.E. Schwab's groundbreaking book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue , can be found in translation in a variety of Italian bookstores as La vita invisibile di Addie LaRue.  France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. Acquired by Oscar fantastica, a Mondadori imprint dedicated primarily to sci-fi/fantasy among other speculative works, La vita invisibile di Addie LaRue was translated by Marina Calvaresi for Italian publication. The original English edition ...

Casey McQuiston's Red, White, & Royal Blue is staple in both the queer and romcom book communities. It's highly visible on BookTok and Bookstagram, and should you peer at any Gen Z or Millennial's bookshelf for more than five seconds you'll immediately spot the iconic red spine. This is truly a special novel, loud and proud in its optimism and radical queer joy, which is why I personally found it so thrilling to see Rosso, bianco, & sangue blu available in various Italian bookstores. When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a ...

Il ladro di fulmini was a going away gift from my mom for study abroad. I consider it pretty high up there with my other most prized possessions: my absolutely destroyed copies of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, complete with original covers, deformed spines, and a whole lot of water damage. I've definitely treated this version much more kindly.  If you couldn't already tell, Rick Riordan’s work has had a big impact on me. I can say without a single doubt that it was his books that got me into avidly reading. I started with them in the first grade and devoured them as every series came out, all the way through high school. I owe my choice of major and (future, fingers crossed) profession to him. That being understood, The Lightning Thief is really important to me. So, when I opened Il ladro di fulmini and saw “Non ho scelto io di essere un mezzosangue,” I did what every respectable publishing and Italian double major does. I slammed it closed and I screamed. To explain the ab...

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...

I have seen a handful of Queer books, or books involving Queer characters, at various stores in Italy, but seeing Heartstopper at La Feltrinelli in Lecce still managed to surprise me somewhat. This was the first store I’d seen in Italy to specifically have an LGBTQ section, and even from across the room I was able to spot the various pride flags and the covers of Heartstopper’s first and fourth volumes, visibly turned out so you could see them. Maybe it’s because I’ve been re-reading all four volumes in preparation for the April 22nd Netflix series release, or maybe it’s because Alice Oseman and their works always manage to catch my eye no matter the situation, but, regardless, I scrambled over there real fast .  You can see the LGBTQ section behind me To my delight, they were indeed Italian translations of the books. The title wasn’t changed—though that honestly makes sense seeing as I can’t think of many easy translations of the word "heartstopper." “Heartstrings” is ...

  Aiden Thomas’ Cemetery Boys, regardless of edition or language, is a powerfully evocative book, perfectly snaring its readers amongst a carefully woven web of teenage love, witty humor, and the intense need to be seen that all queer youth have at one point felt.  A coming of age story at its heart, the book — which keeps its English title in its Italian edition—follows teenage Yadriel, a trans boy determined to prove himself to his Latinx community, all of whom are gifted with the ability to see spirits. When his cousin suddenly dies, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. However, the ghost he summons is not his cousin. It's Julian Diaz, the resident bad boy of his high school, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. Aiden Thomas is a New York Times Bestselling author with an MFA in Crea...

It's always interesting to see when titles are or aren't translated, and The Giver by Lois Lowry is no exception. You'd think that there are set rules for when and when not to translate titles, but that's not exactly true. I've seen books here in Italy that keep the original English title, translate it directly, or give it a new translated title, and none of these follow a pattern. Circe by Madeline Miller is named after its titular character and the title remains the same, but Ariadne by Jennifer Saint becomes Arianna in the Italian edition. You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao became Ancora una volta con te . The more translated books I find, the more I learn it really is done on a case-by-case basis. In the case of The Giver , it’s such a staple that it makes sense why the English is kept.  The Giver tells the story of 12-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly utopian society. As the story goes on, however, truths are discovered and revelations are made, and...

Originally published under the English title You’ve Reached Sam , Dustin Thao’s YA debut tells the story of Julie, a recent high-school graduate who just lost her boyfriend Sam. In her grief, Julie calls Sam’s phone, just to hear his voicemail one last time, but then a miracle happens. Sam picks up. The book’s title pays homage to this central theme of the story, phone calls and reaching through grief. But what happens when an important phrase such as “you’ve reached [name]” can’t be translated? Phone calls aren’t often the first thing you think of when you imagine cultural differences, but the ways in which languages adapt around technology aren’t always the same, despite globalization and the rise of English loanwords. In Italy, when you pick up the phone you say “pronto.” If someone’s asking who they’re speaking to, or when recording a voicemail, the way to introduce yourself is “sono [name].” But “I am Sam” doesn’t hold the same double-meaning as “You’ve reached sam”, and “pronto” ...

Gruppo Mondadori's Oscar Vault, known for its trade translations of trending YA books, has acquired the rights to the Italian edition of Sue Lynn Tan's Daughter of the Moon Goddess.  Translator information and the Italian release date have yet to be made public. Tan describes the book as a "romantic fantasy of immortals, magic, and love, inspired by the legend of Chang’e, the Chinese Moon Goddess."  Daughter of the Moon Goddess  was first published in the US in January 2022 by Harper Voyager and is represented by Naomi Davis of Bookends Literary. Tan's sequel,  Heart of the Sun,  is forthcoming in November 2022.  Translation deals have also been made for Hungary, Brazil, Spain, Poland, Romania, Turkey, and Russia. 

Circe by Madeline Miller is one of the first books I saw in Italy. At first, I didn’t even think the book was a translation. The cover was almost identical to my copy back in the States, and the title hadn’t changed at all—which makes sense as it is a name. A quick flip through the first couple of pages proved me very wrong. This was the first time I’d seen a translated book that wasn’t a classic, and I was absolutely ecstatic. I immediately wanted to know everything about it—who published it, who translated it, how the acquisition happened. There’s nothing like seeing a story you know and love being shared and well-appreciated across cultures. And well-appreciated it truly is.  I’ve quickly learned that Madeline Miller is very popular here in Italy. La canzone di Achille, when name-dropped around Italian university students, had gotten me a chorus of excited shouts. Miller’s works are a consistent staple amongst Italian bookstores, across all the towns I’ve visited. I’ve seen the...