Viola di Grado is one of Italy’s most exciting and critically acclaimed new authors. Her debut novel Settanta acrilico trenta lana – published in english under the title 70% acrylic 30% wool – won the prestigious Premio Campiello Opera Prima prize (Previous winners include Alessandro Piperno and Paolo Giordano), and her second novel Cuore Cavo […]
Daisy Godwin’s lament about the lack of redmption in so many of today’s novels – made whilst chairing the Orange Prize judging panel – put her in good company. Samuel Johnson famously endorsed Nahum Tate‘s sugar coated revision of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The play had been too bleak, by far, for a Restoration audience, prompting Tate […]
TMO interview with Premio Strega winning Italian novelist Paolo Giordano “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked […]
“‘I recall one superb pun anyway: qui vive la pietà quando e ben morta’ She said nothing. ‘Is it not a great phrase?’ he gushed. She said nothing. ‘Now’ he said like a fool ‘I wonder how you could translate that?’ She still said nothing. Then: ‘do you think’ she murmured ‘it is absolutely necessary […]
