Trieste, Triest or Trst is situated between East and West, where the languages of da, ja and sì dialogue with one another. Its territory once extended from Gorizia and Gradisca along the Slovene coast and into the Croatian interior of Istria, right down as far as Dalmatia. Different nationalities lived together, without ever truly mixing. After the free port was created in 1719 and Maria Teresa of Austria then granted the city freedom of navigation, the city grew rapidly and Mitteleuropa became an economic, diplomatic and cultural reality. However, this living all together soon became an Italianisation of the Slovene and Croatian populations, who, with the Industrial Revolution, were transformed from sedentary and farming populations into factory workers and office workers. Their political aspirations were often blocked, laying the foundations for the future issues regarding the national identity of the Julian region. Trieste undoubtedly acquired a nationality, but by marginalising certain components of its pluralistic identity.

Mariarosa Bricchi teaches Italian Linguistics at the University of Pavia’s Cremona campus. She specialises, above all, in nineteenth- and twentieth-century prose, and the lexicon and grammar between the eighteenth century and the present. She has also written a book on the Italian of translations, La lingua è un’orchestra. Piccola grammatica italiana per traduttori (e scriventi) (il Saggiatore, 2018). She recently edited editions of Curzio Malaparte, Il buonuomo Lenin (Adelphi, 2018), and Carlo Emilio Gadda, Norme per la redazione di un testo radiofonico (Adelphi, 2018). Her most recent book is Manzoni prosatore. Un percorso linguistico (Carocci, 2021).

Lise Chapuis has a PhD in French and Comparative Literature. One day she fell in love with Italian, so much so that she became a translator. She is also in charge of the “Selva selvaggia” series of publishers L’Arbre vengeur, which gives French readers the chance to discover numerous works of Italian literature, both classic and contemporary.

The fifty-eighth edition of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the second totally virtual edition, took place not long ago and we spoke about it with the event’s manager, Elena Pasoli.

Translator of hundreds of books, including both classic and contemporary works, and, since 1989, director for Actes Sud of one of the most prestigious series of Italian literature in France, “Lettres italiennes”, Marguerite Pozzoli maintains the same enthusiasm and passion she had when she began her career.

Richard Dixon was born in Coventry, attended King Henry VIII School, and graduated in Business Law at Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry. He became a Middle Temple barrister in 1978. He practised for nine years at no. 2 Dr Johnson’s Buildings, Temple, London, in mainly criminal cases, including appearances in the Court of Appeal and House of Lords (now the Supreme Court). He left the law in 1989 and moved to Italy’s Marche region with his partner, now husband, Peter Greene. During the early 1990s, they wrote a number of guidebooks including Italy on Backroads (Duncan Petersen, 1993); 3-D City Guide: Rome (Duncan Petersen, 1995); Charming Small Hotels: Tuscany and Umbria (Duncan Petersen, 1995); Central Italy: The Versatile Guide (Duncan Petersen, 1996) and Le Marche: The Gateway to Central Italy (Aerdorica, 2000). He became a full-time translator in 1996. He has been a member of the Associazione Italiana Traduttori e Interpreti since 2009, an honorary member since 2021, and a member of the Society of Authors since 2012.

Together with the Divina Commedia and Pinocchio, Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe is the best-known and most translated work in Italian literature, as well as being, to an even greater extent than the other two works, quintessentially reflective in the collective imagination of the culture from which it originates (which, it has to be said, is not always exactly positive!).