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  • Matija, Marija and their Friends

    Wait, everybody! Yesterday I was so wrapped up in what I was writing, focussing on myself and the thoughts I remembered having 19 months ago, that somehow I forgot the most important thing, the first concern for any translator worth his or her salt: the context. In other words, I didn’t talk about Matija Raos, his mother Marija or their friends in Croatia. I can’t understand how I could forget Matija, even for just a few hours, but at least this way I have the chance to write an entire post about him rather than just a few paragraphs. And that’s something he definitely deserves.…

  • 19 months later, I start writing

    On 31 October 2017, a decidedly unpleasant radiologist sent me off with the words, “You’d better find a surgeon”. It was official: I had a tumour of the pancreas. I was at the Regina Margherita Hospital in Rome’s Trastevere quarter, where my family doctor had arranged for me to undergo an urgent, total-body CT scan. I was there with Gloria. Of all my friends, she seemed best able to handle eventual bad news. Until then, no one else had been aware of my doubts, or of any of the medical examinations I’d already done. Two days earlier, I’d gone for an ultrasound exam all by…