Editor’s Note. On May 20, 2015, Erri De Luca appeared in a courtroom in Turin, as a witness in his own defense, to counter the charges brought against him by the Italian state for “instigating violence.” De Luca’s alleged offense was simply expressing his opinion during a 2013 phone interview with the . . .
Read MoreMy father and mother came by plane to Italy. No run-down boat for them, they had the luxury of a regularly scheduled flight. Last century, back in the seventies, people like my parents who came from the global South still had the possibility of traveling like any other human beings. No rickety . . .
Read MoreThat picture of the Garissa University massacre which left 148 students strewn across the floor—I did everything in my power not to come across it on Twitter. But that picture, heavy with death and desperation, forced itself on me. Young bodies, partially clothed, now robbed of a future, killed off like rats. . . .
Read MoreJust back from the AWP in Minneapolis, I’d love to be writing this morning about the fun of chatting with writers—some we have published, some we would love to publish, some we look forward to getting to know—or about the splendid haul of books and magazines that pushed my carry-on to the . . .
Read MoreIn 2012, I went to a rally for Senate hopeful Joe Donnelly, the Democratic candidate for the Indiana senate seat vacated by Dick Lugar, a Republican moderate that in the primary had been run out of office by the Tea Party candidate, Richard Mourdock. You might remember that name because he and . . .
Read MoreIn Joshua Oppenheimer’s masterful film, The Act of Killing, perpetrators are invited to re-imagine their role in Indonesian anti-communist massacres in the mid-1960s. The killers, having fashioned themselves after gangsters from American films, are eager to relive the glory years. Speaking freely about their crimes, they reenact the killings before the cameras, acting out . . .
Read MoreEditor’s Note: Three weeks after the recent events in Paris, as an article in yesterday’s Guardian points out, it’s hard not to make comparisons. Tana de Zulueta, a former member of parliament in Italy and a board member of Articolo 21, an Italian NGO supporting press freedoms, comments, “After the massacre at Charlie Hebdo . . .
Read MoreEditor’s note: Tuesday, January 27, 2015 marks seventy years since the liberation of Auschwitz. In a recent novel, the Italian writer Erri De Luca reflects on his visit to the camp during the ’90s. My Yiddish came from obstinacy. I first wanted to learn it after returning from the ceremonies marking the . . .
Read MoreIn this video blog, Massachusetts Review editor and translator Jim Hicks reads selections from the English translation of Erri De Luca’s A Dissenting Word. De Luca is currently being tried in Italy for expressing — during an interview on the Italian site of the Huffington Post — his solidarity with the Susa Valley’s NO TAV activists, a . . .
Read MoreYesterday morning Charlie Hebdo hit the newstands in France and sold out within minutes. The cover of this “survival issue”—the newspaper’s first since two armed gunmen slaughtered eight of its journalists, killing four others as well at its Paris offices—appeared with the title, “All is pardoned,” and featured a caricature of Muhammed wearing an . . .
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