Storia delle prime volte

A young Bulgarian PhD student seeks home and herself in Berkeley. A translator arrives in Turin to meet the writer she is translating. A Tuscan scholar discusses Italian literature with a foreigner while a train is taking him to Rome… Ten short stories that trace the nomadic and cosmopolitan identities of characters constantly in transit between languages, cultures and territories; the emotional, linguistic and literary map of a physical and intellectual journey between Eastern Europe, Italy and the USA. Written in Italian by a native Bulgarian-speaking author who lives in an English-speaking country, the book discusses themes that are increasingly urgent in the globalised world: multilingualism, translation of the self, emigration, the outsider’s perspective, linguistic and cultural belonging, and nostalgia.