ann's annotations

    This book was a lovely present by the EuropaEditionsUK!     It felt almost like a match-made in heaven, to be honest. I had just switched my degree from French to Italian (since I wanted to do something new), and was looking to discover more of Italian literature. So, when I was singing up for EuropaEditionsUK newsletter and received this as a gift, I was ecstatic. Not only did it match my interest (and was free, which my student’s wallet is forever grateful for) but they gave one that certainly draws me more towards Italian literature, along with Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies that I read earlier on. And of course, this is all thanks to the translator Ann Goldstein, who gave this story another captivating voice that allows the story to be accessible to the Anglophone readers.  “From the moment I was given back to her, the word “mama” had stuck in my throat like a frog that wouldn’t jump out”    This novel, which sets in late 20th century Italy, follows the

    'Nature writing': a writing that concerns the natural environment. This is pretty straight forward right? But let's dive in a little deeper into this genre, and I think you'll began that it is not as clean-cut as it might appear at first glance. Well in the UK, at least     When I asked my friends what does 'nature writing' mean for them, the majority of who answered put it simply: "it is an observation [or description] of the natural world"; of faunas and floras and some did also mention bodies of water like the river. What this suggests for me a kind of distance between the writer, and even the reader, and the space of the 'natural world'.  Why does this matter?  you may wonder. Well, I think this reveals a way of viewing and experiencing that either be seen as an obstacle to the environmental question. ‘We’ve had the outdoors ripped from us’: What the growing trend of nature memoirs tells us about the state of the world'  Independent

        This topic was the first ever podcast I ever created, and was the reason why I began it. Thus, this topic really is rather dear to my heart.     Today, on this blog, I would like to share with you the original script, which unlike the others was handwritten. This won't just be a transcript, but a revisit of the topic, a bit more than a year later.    It all started in the summer of 2020, being a bit bored and wanting to find a platform where I could share my passion for literature, I decided to create this podcast. The name, I honestly can't remember whose idea it was, but it played with my English name Ann and the word 'annotations', which I believe to be a good one.    As an A-level English Literature student, at the time, studying the Gothic, I was reading around the topic. This led me to the Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic, in which I found an essay titled 'Asian Gothic' by Katarzyna Ancuta. It was for me a great opportunity not only to furt

      In today’s blog, I would like to talk about the theme of 'a literature for consolation'. What I mean by this, is that, sometimes  within a text, literary devices are used as a way to seek consolation. Think, narrative justice - when it is the narrative that brings about the justice, not written in like the human law, judicial system. But sometimes it is not just used by the author to bring about consolation for the readers. Sometimes characters within the text would also use the imagination and literature to comfort themselves. When it is used for the readers, it doesn’t necessarily mean a happy ending, but that there are parts in the text that function sort of like a maxim, where the reader can relate to the human condition that the text evokes. This, I feel, is an extension of the idea of “literature as a currency” or “stories as currency”, where through narrative one buys consolation. Furthermore, the type of text I will be looking at will be the type of text that fun

 When I was reading "At Night All Blood is Black" by David Diop and translated by Anna Moschovakis, there was a passage that struck me. It is when our protagonist essentially reflects on the multiplicity of his identity after serving at the Fronts for the French as an African during World War One, says: " To translate is never simple. To translate is to betray at the borders, it's to cheat, it's to trade one sentence for other. To translate is one of the only human activities in which one is required to lie about the details to convey the truth at large. To translate is to risk understanding better than others that the truth about a word is not single, but double, even triple, quadruple, or quintuple. To translate is to distance oneself from God's truth, which, as everyone knows or believe, is single "      This passage jump-started my past interest in the field of translation studies. Moreover, I believe this little passage contains a lot key topics wit

  Stories as valuable currency and the ‘Arabian Nights’     We all know that stories are valuable. Stories are everywhere: from the more evident ones like novels and movies, to video advertisement. Storytelling is one of the most ancient format for the discourse of ideas; from myths to legends to old wives tales, beneath the veil of fiction, a truth often resides there. It is also through stories that we interact and negotiate with the world - personal statements, anecdotes, etc. Therefore, stories almost acts as a currency in of itself.    The idea came to me when I was reading ‘ The Wrath and the Dawn ’ and ‘ The Rose and the Dagger ’ by Renee Ahdieh, which is a reimagined work of the story of Shahrazad’s 1001 Nights. This led me to read a condensed version of the ‘ Arabian Nights ’ by Andrew Lang - though I haven’t exactly finished it yet. Through these readings, one of the things that I was drawn to the most was the aspect that many of these characters the collection of tales trade