Reeds in the Wind: Top 100 translations in Fiction, Compared to Lampedusa’s The Leopard

 

We’re thrilled to learn that our edition of Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda’s Reeds in the Wind, translated by Martha King (1998), has gotten some very good attention lately. 

First, Boyd Tonkin lists it at number 31 in his The 100 Best Novels in Translation (Cambridge: Galileo, 2018). Among his other authors are Cervantes, Voltaire, Tolstoy, Proust, Colette, Svevo, Mann, Nabakov, Duras, Camus, Yourcenar, Lampedusa, Fuentes, Kundera, Müller.... Here’s some of what he has to say about Reeds:

“Martha King captures Deledda’s human and natural landscape in all its bold colors: radiant and serene in one scene, rugged an violent in the next.… If you have never read Grazia Deledda’s Sardinian novel Reeds in the Wind, you will want to read it now.”

That story was picked up in The Times Literary Supplement (5 October 2018).

Then recently, there’s Nicholas Whyte in From the Heart of Europe (29 December 2025), who compares Reeds in the Wind to Lampedusa's The Leopard:

“Grazia Deledda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926…for her idealistically inspired writings which, with plastic clarity, picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general.… Reeds in the Wind/Canne al vento, is her best known book.… It’s about a declining noble family in Sardinia, and the tension between the two surviving sisters, the son of the sister who fled to the mainland years before, and the old retainer who is the guardian of the dark family secret that is eventually revealed. It reminded me of The Leopard.”

The Theft (Il Furto) Reviewed in Renaissance Quarterly

The new Fall season opens with a fine review in Renaissance Quarterly (79.3, Fall 2026) of Francesco D'Ambra’s The Theft (Il Furto), edited by Vanni Bramanti, Linda L. Carroll, Anthony M. Cummings, and Alexander Dean. Sergio Costola has high praise for “an exceptional team of editors” who have produced “an impeccable translation” that “makes available, in an unprecedented way, the complete materials for a single festive theatrical event from the mid-sixteenth century.” Please have a look at this review.
 

Mediaevistik Review and Publishers’ Note

We call readers’ attention to a new review by Prof. Albrecht Classen of C. Stephen Jaeger’s Medieval Humanism: Collected Essays that has just been published in Mediaevistik. We thank Prof. Classen for his largely positive review but add a note to the review posted here that clarifies what we view as some oversights in the review.

We invite our readers to read both the review and our Publishers’ Note.

 

Speculum Review for Huon of Bordeaux

Huon of Bordeaux, translated for the first time into English by Catherine M. Jones and William W. Kibler, has just received a glowing review in Speculum, the pre-eminent journal of medieval studies. 

Bill Burgwinkle of King’s College, Cambridge writes that “The publication of this lively and accurate translation of the thirteenth-century chanson de geste (epic) Huon de Bordeaux calls for some rejoicing.… This is an altogether excellent and welcome addition to the medieval library in English, and we hope that Italica Press and these translators might someday consider furnishing others in the same vein.”

Please have a look at: http://www.italicapress.com/index532.html.

 

New Reviews

We’ve recently had reviews of two of our titles that we’ve found especially interesting.

The first is Lorenzo Miletti’s review in Latomus of Rabun Taylor’s Ancient Naples: A Documentary History. Origins to c. 350 CE. He has high praise for the most recently published volume in our Documentary History of Naples series. Miletti lauds Taylor’s research and the scope of his coverage, his command of the written sources and of the most recent archaeological findings, and his ability to synthesize and interpret these for a broad audience of both specialists and more general readers. The review notes the volume’s up-to-date appeal for both an Anglophone and a wider Italian and international audience. Miletti concludes his review with some suggestions for a larger format, color-illustrated edition. Stay tuned.…

The second is Norman Jope’s piece in the latest Tears in the Fence on Ana Ilievska’s and Pietro Russo’s Contemporary Sicilian Poetry: A Multilingual Anthology. Jope has many very good things to say about the volume, its selection of authors and poems, and Ana Ilievska’s translations. He also raises the question of whether such a collection should reflect the universal themes raised by this wide array of authors — and foregrounded by the editors — or focus more closely on specific times, places, and contexts. These are interesting reflections, from a decidedly Anglophone perspective. 

Please have a look at both reviews.

New Reviews of Pascoli’s Convivial Poems

Elena Borelli & James Ackhurst’s new translation of Giovanni Pascoli’s Convivial Poems has gotten quite a lot of good critical attention this season, with reviews in Reading in Translation, London Grip, Gradiva, and Annali d’Italianistica.

Please have a look at: http://www.italicapress.com/index556.html

 

Two fine new reviews

We’re happy to share with you fine new reviews of two of our titles. 

The first is of The Sermons and Liturgy of St. James, edited by Thomas F. Coffey and Maryjane Dunn. Kyle C. Lincoln’s take appears in the February 2023 edition of The Medieval Review. We have reposed it here.

The second is Salvatore Pappalardo’s appreciation of Giovanni Pascoli’s Convivial Poems, translated and edited by James Ackhurst and Elena Borelli, in the February 27, 2023 issue of Reading in Translation. We have reposted this review here.

Italian Crime Writers

We’re happy to say that our new Italian Crime Writers Series continues to grow and has started to receive some nice reviews. 

A Conspiracy of Talkers, by Gaetano Savatteri, gets a fine review by Andrew and Suzanne Edwards in the 10 September 2021 issue of Times of Sicily. 

Agony, by Federico De Roberto, is reviewed by David Hebblethwaite in the August 22, 2021 issue of David’s Book World. 

The first volume in the series, Quo Vadis, Baby?, by Grazia Verasani, has already received high praise by Jeanne Bonner in the December 2018 issue of Three Percent.

All these titles are available in hardcover, paperback, and digital editions, at very reasonable prices. Please investigate!

Another fine review of Edson’s Buondelmonti

Evelyn Edson’s edition and translation of Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Description of the Aegean and Other Islands has received another fine review, by Emmanouil Michailou, in the latest issue of Imago Mundi. “…All can enjoy this well-produced book and get ensnared by Buondelmonti’s maps and descriptions of the major islands of the Western world. Map historians in particular will be grateful to Evelyn Edson for her wonderful exposition of Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s pioneering creation. Isolarii still play an important role in the growing research of cartography and having such an accessible example on one’s own desk is a privilege.” Please check this review out. 

New Review for Edson’s Buondelmonti

Evelyn Edson’s edition and translation of Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Description of the Aegean and Other Islands has received a fine review by Craig Kallendorf in the last number of Seventeenth-Century News/Neo-Latin News. “A lavish production… it does indeed meet the highest aesthetic standards, but it is also a work of scholarship, carefully prepared over a period of several years. In addition, it is a valuable reminder that Neo-Latin includes not only poetry and plays, but also less obvious genres like travel literature.” Please check this review out. 

New Review for Edson Edition of Buondelmonti

Evelyn Edson’s new edition of Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Description of the Aegean and Other Islands has just received a very good review from Bert Johnson, vice president of the Washington Map Society, writing in the most recent issue of The Portolan.

Among the many things Johnson and The Portolan liked were the “precise reproduction of the manuscript itself (43 pages recto and verso, for a total of 86 pages). The beauty of the hand colored manuscripts and the maps they contain is striking. The maps are large and handsomely colored, accompanied by commentary on the history and current status of the island.… there follows an easier-to-read transcription of the text. This is followed by an English translation of the text…. The work closes with an extensive bibliography and index.… Evelyn Edson has done a magnificent job of ensuring that the reader will have full access to all that Buondelmonti has to offer, in both text and illustration. For his part, Buondelmonti has been fortunate in having his work examined by such a skilled exponent.”

Please have a look!

Kevin Poole Interviewed on YouTube

Kevin Poole was recently interviewed by Yale University’s Marilyn Wilkes for “The MacMillan Report” on his recent English edition of The Chronicle of Pseudo-Turpin. Dr. Poole reviews the story of Pseudo-Turpin, his translation and his analysis. He discusses his interest in the work for teaching and research and stresses the importance of such works in the Compostela and Roland cycles in the context of Christian-Muslim relations.

Poole notes that, while completely fictitious, the text was presented as a genuine work from the circle of Charlemagne, making broad truth claims as an eyewitness account to Crusade history. Its author surrounded his tale with the authority of Charlemagne’s life and reign, noting that the hundreds of copies produced in the Middle Ages — both in Latin and in various vernaculars — only reinforced and broadened its popularity through its local and national variations. Its appeal was thus both historical and fictitious, linking the lives and aspirations of its audience to its sacred, secular and mythical histories.

Poole and Wilkes discuss the manuscript tradition, the identification and use of the original version in Compostela’s Codex Calixtinus, and the popularity of Compostela itself and the medieval and modern pilgrimage to that sacred site. They talk about the history of the manuscript, its recent theft and recovery, access to the book, modern research methods and the text’s various transcriptions and modern translations.

Why is the story important today? Again Poole stresses the history of Crusade and Jihad, their ideological underpinnings, and modern variations on such thought systems. Historical analysis, Poole argues, can trace the origins of such beliefs and thus better understand our own contemporary actions and discourse. Poole’s book is also an important reflection on the uses and abuses of history in the past and today.

It’s a delightful twenty-minute conversation on YouTube. Take a look!

Reviews of New Titles

We’ve received two excellent reviews for recent titles. Renaissance Quarterly has called William Tronzo’s Petrarch’s Two Gardens: Landscape and the Image of Movement “absorbing and transformative,” while The Medieval Review notes that in their edition of Aiol: A Chanson de Geste, Sandra C. Malicote and A. Richard Hartman “have provided a valuable resource for scholars and an inviting tale for devotees of medieval heroic literature.”

Please take a moment or two to read the full text of these reviews at the links above. 

James Hester on Mondschein, Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise

We’re happy to report that Ken Mondschein’s translation and edition of Camillo Agrippa’s Fencing: A Renaissance Treatise has just received an outstanding review. James Hester of the Royal Armouries Museum writes, “Fencing historian Ken Mondschein has done the Western martial arts community a great service by translating into English the fencing treatise of the iconic ‘Renaissance man’ turned fencing master, Camillo Agrippa.... This text is a valuable resource for historians, art historians, science historians, and scholars of masculine identity in 16th-century Italy....
“Mondschein succeeds in producing a translation that is modern and accessible without sacrificing the literary flavour of the period in which it was written. It is also heartening to see this text contribute to the growing trend of treating fencing manuals not just as resources for today’s aspiring swordsmen, but also as a useful primary source for in-depth research within the wider academic community.”  
For the full review see De Re Militari.