The 2023 Italian Prose in Translation Award Shortlist

The Judges’ Citations

The Betrothed
By Alessandro Manzoni
Translated from Italian by Michael F. Moore
The Modern Library

Retranslating a classic is always a special challenge, especially when it means not simply creating a contemporary version that speaks to new readers or producing another interpretation of a widely beloved text, but trying to make a book happen for the first time in a way it never has. Michael F. Moore’s translation of Alessandro Manzoni's great 19th-century Italian novel I promessi sposi, The Betrothed, is a happening—a literary event. While his work is everywhere evident in this irrepressibly readable historical novel, whose many narrative threads are impressively stylistically differentiated, what is most striking is this translation’s fearlessness, both in its judicious use of Italian as in “bravo” rather than “thug,” and in its confident use of idioms like “this marriage ain’t gonna happen” for the novel’s most famous, plot-sparking line. Purists may object: let them read the old translations, and leave this achievement for the rest of us.

The Color Line
By Igiaba Scego
Translated by John Cullen and Gregory Conti
Other Press

The prolific, bold, ingenious Igiaba Scego is back with another riveting novel, this time set in the historical period in Italy known as the "Scramble for Africa" and present-day Rome and Mogadishu. The novel is narrated by two women: Lafanu Brown, a Chippewa-Haitian artist who makes her way from antebellum America to Rome in the late 19th century, and whose work enjoys considerable success, and Leila, an African-Italian art curator promoting the work of a forgotten Lafanu Brown a century later. The translation, begun by John Cullen who has sadly since passed away, was completed by Gregory Conti. Their unique collaboration beautifully captures the novel's narrative flow as it twists and turns and jumps back and forth in time. Cullen and Conti's precision of language and storytelling sensibility perfectly complements Scego's own.

The Enchanted Boot: Italian Fairy Tales & Their Tellers
By various authors
Translated from Italian by Nancy L. Canepa
Wayne State University Press

An extraordinary work of scholarship and translation, Nancy Canepa's unique collection of texts in The Enchanted Boot represents a comprehensive history of the fairy tale in Italy and, quite simply, it is a tour de force. A riveting literary history, this book provides stunning translations from the 15th century to the present day, stories from the better known—Basile and Calvino—to the lesser known—Laura Gonzenbach and Grazia Deledda (who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1926). Canepa has mastered the fairy-tale register in a collection of texts spanning multiple regions, dialects, and historical periods. Her creative rendering of dialogue is a delight, and her aphoristic morals pack a punch. Anyone with an interest in how literature can shape identity, express cultural anxieties, and reveal our present, past, and future will profoundly appreciate this book.

The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts
By Silvia Ferrara
Translated by Todd Portnowitz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

In a highly engaging colloquial style, Silvia Ferrara in The Greatest Invention explores mankind’s miraculous creation of written language by whisking us around the globe to marvel at hieroglyphs in Egypt, Rongorongo on Easter Island, the Phaistos Disk on Crete, stopping off along the way to ponder everything from knotted Inca quipu strings to inscribed Chinese turtle shells to modern-day emojis. Translator Todd Portnowitz matches the author’s scientific rigor while also well conveying her boundless enthusiasm and sparkling wit. His skilled use of adaptation and localization bridges cultural and linguistic gaps, paving a clear, smooth footpath for us through the utterly magical world of written symbols.

M: Son of the Century
By Antonio Scurati
Translated by Anne Milano Appel
Harper

Why read novels about the abominable figures of history? It’s not merely to learn about the past, but to think about the future, and even the form historical tale-telling takes. Antonio Scurati’s M: Son of the Century is a sweeping “documentary novel” about the critical years of Mussolini’s rise to power. Its translation required painstaking attention to historical detail and daunting amounts of research to render public speeches, private messages, editorials, phone transcripts, diary entries, telegrams, love letters, parliamentary addresses and more from 1919 to 1924. Translator Anne Milano Appel expertly navigates the translation of this variety of literary forms, while also capturing Scurati’s powerful and compelling narration. Her translation in English is an important contribution to our understanding of documented historical events and provides food for thought about our political trajectory in the present.