Posted
May 4th, 2011
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Beauty and the Inferno by Roberto Saviano
Translated by Oonagh Stransky
Beauty and the Inferno consists of twenty-five powerful and incisive essays by the formidably courageous investigative journalist Roberto Saviano. This important collection includes essays on the legacy of the earthquake at L’Aquila, a town at risk of becoming overrun by Mafia; on boxing as an escape route; on the life and death of South African jazz singer Miriam Makeba, who died in Italy after a concert she gave in support of African migrants murdered by the Mafia; on an encounter with Salman Rushdie, a fellow victim of brutal threats to his literary freedom. The final essay in the collection celebrates the life and work of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in October 2006.
Published by The MacLehose Press, May 2011
Roberto Saviano was born in 1979 in Casal di Principe, a Mafia stronghold in Naples. He grew up in a middle-class household – his father Luigi was a doctor, and his mother Miriam a teacher. Saviano’s first experience of the Mafia came during his youth, when his father rushed a young Camorra (Neapolitan Mafia)victim to hospital, against Mafia protocol (victims are supposed to be left to die). Luigi was later severely beaten in retribution.
Years on, Saviano himself enraged the Mafia with the publication of his carefully researched Gomorrah (2006), an expose of Camorra. The Camorra immediately issued him with a death sentence. He was given a round-the-clock police guard and was forced to move constantly. Despite the huge success of the novel – Gomorrah has sold millions of copies, won a number of high-profile literary awards, and spawned a widely-acclaimed film adaptation in 2008 – Saviano is forced to live in exile, unable to make public appearances in Italy and faced with continued death threats.
Oonagh Stransky was born in Paris and now resides in New York City. She grew up in the Middle East and in London, and attended Mills College and UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, Universita’ di Firenze, and Columbia University. She teaches English in a performing arts high school in New York. Stransky has been a board member of the American Literary Translators Association since 2003. Her translations of Born Twice and Day After Day were both nominated for the Dublin Impac Award and Almost Blue won the Booksense 76 Award in 2000.
Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/writersintranslation/recentlysupportedtitles/beautyandtheinferno/
