My latest

Forthcoming from Penguin Canada, April 2010 Hailed as a masterpiece on its initial publication in Italy, Blindly (Alla cieca, Garzanti, 2005) is a novel of highly original, poetic intensity. One reviewer, writing in La Repubblica of May 19, 2005, describes the work as a voyage through time and space, whose innovative form is the narrative voice of a pazzo lucido, a lucid madman. The unity of time and place are shattered, and there is not so much a plot as two categories operant in the world: the revolutionary and his inquisitors and persecutors. Formalistically speaking, the novel is an experiential vortex: the narrative is a river of words, a flood, a sea – a stream of consciousness and flow of associations that becomes a torrent. Thematically it reprises recurring motifs found in Magris’ work, such as the sea, as well as his concerns with lives that are derailed and left high and dry. Indeed the author has written that the writer's task is to pull shipwrecked lives out of the water and “take them aboard a precarious Noah's Ark of paper”. That and to set the world right.

The figurehead is another recurring motif. If in one sense it represents those who turn a blind eye, who look and move on, guarda e passa as Dante says, it is also the image of a humanity that having lost its way, continues to plow ahead sightlessly, gropingly through life’s seas in a singular act of faith. At times a blindfold is necessary, so as not to see fear and be able to go forward. The figurehead is also a lifesaver, literally and figuratively. A shipwrecked seaman can grab onto her wooden skirts and float to safety.In the end this journey through space and time is a story of senseless actions and wrongs endured and inflicted. Of revolutionaries and those who persecute them. Of victims and oppressors, hunter and prey, prisoners and their warders, the betrayed and their betrayers everywhere. And over it all the pall of silence, of shrouding the truth. By those unwilling to attest to it. Another form of the occhio bendato, of not seeing.
Claudio Magris, born in Trieste, Italy, is one of Europe’s most renowned writers, essayists and critics. His work, translated into numerous languages, has won him worldwide acclaim and numerous awards, and he has often been mentioned as a frontrunner for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Professor of German Studies at the University of Trieste, Magris is a member of several European academies and has been visiting professor in many North American and European institutions. He served as senator in the Italian Parliament from 1994 to 1996.

From Akashic Books, January 2009

Rome Noir, part of a groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies launched by Akashic Books of New York.
The volume, edited by Chiara Stangalino and Maxim Jakubowski, features all-new stories, translated by Anne Milano Appel, Ann Goldstein and Kathrine Jason. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of Rome and its outskirts, and looks beyond the tourist facade of Italy's capital. This is the real city of Fellini, Pasolini, and countless other major artists who devoted their lives to depicting the grandeur and decadence of this ever fascinating metropolis. Both a modern city suffocated by traffic fumes and cars and a repository of knowledge and Classical monuments, Rome - with its hills and ruins - is a perfect conduit for an excursion into the many facets of modern noir. Here, Rome takes a place of honor amongst Akashic's growing collection of anthologies devoted to the dark streets of cities.
My translations include stories by Diego De Silva, Marcello Fois, Giuseppe Genna, Evelina Santangelo, Antonio Scurati and Nicoletta Vallorani.

Publication pending

The novella Lei dunque capirà (Garzanti, 2006) takes the form of a monologue, the single voice of a self-styled Muse who in life – now she is in the afterlife – inspired her poet-husband to greatness. The woman has crossed over to what is depicted here as a Casa di Riposo, but has obtained a special concession from the Director of the Rest Home to allow her husband to come and take her away. At the last moment she decides not to go, and the resulting monologue is her explanation to the Director – the “you”, Lei, of the title – of her reasons for not returning with her husband. This latter-day Eurydice’s voice is remarkably direct, leaving no doubt about her high regard for herself and her ambivalent feelings toward her spouse. Her tone can be cutting at times, almost mocking. She is at once tender and merciless, loving yet ruthlessly honest in her dispassionate analysis of her poet-husband and their life together. The work has been performed numerous times in theatres throughout Europe.

From Constable & Robinson
London, 2009

The Mammoth Book of Best International Crime, edited by leading anthologist Maxim Jakubowski, presents the very best in crime writing from around the world – 40 short stories by the world’s premier crime writers. The stories cover the full spectrum of crime fiction, from noir and thrillers, to whodunnits and procedurals, with settings that include Italy, Cuba, Scandinavia, Russia, USA, Japan, Germany, Mexico, France, Spain and the UK. The all-star line-up of international authors includes the two Italian writers whose stories I translated: Giorgio Faletti, author of the 5 million copy seller I Kill, and Diego De Silva.

Federico II e San Francesco by Carlo Fornari (Parma, 2005)

Frederick II and Saint Francis by Carlo Fornari (original title: Federico II e San Francesco) was published by Edizioni all'Insegna del Veltro, Parma, 2005. Born from a series of talks given by the author at the Frederick II Foundation in Jesi, Italy, and published in part in the journal Tabulae of the Centro Studi Fredericiani, the volume considers the lives of Frederick II and Saint Francis and poses the question: did the Swabian Emperor and the saint of Assisi lead parallel lives? Though certainly not in the customary meaning of the term, the two colossal figures lived very close in time. Conditioned by the same events, each stood out as an undisputed protagonist within the scope of his own role and his own convictions. The two figures were more or less contemporary, sharing the world scene for well over fifteen years: from 1210 — when Innocent III approved the Order of Brothers Minor and proposed Frederick II as King of Germany — until 1226, the year of the Poverello’s death.

A Translation
Claudio Magris, Excerpts from Alla cieca (Garzanti, 2005), Journal of Italian Translation, vol. 1, no. 2, Fall 2006. Luigi Bonaffini, ed.

A Review-article
Anne Milano Appel, "Plowing Magris' Sea: Blindly, With Eyes Wide Open", Forum Italicum, v. 40, no. 2, Fall 2006.

An Interview
“Part Accomplice, Part Rival: the Translator is a True Co-Author: An interview with Claudio Magris”, Absinthe: New European Writing, Dwayne Hayes, ed., March 2007. (Translation of an interview by Ilide Carmignani that originally appeared in Comunicare.Letterature.Lingue, Il Mulino, Bologna, n. 6, 2006, pp. 221-226.)