This Italian publisher sells bilingual Greek/Latin texts for pennies.
The editions are shitty and they are printed in what looks like toilet paper, but you can get The Republic for 4 euros.
Is there anything like this in other countries? Are there any other dirt cheap bilingual classics?
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They are remarkably nice for what they are. Hardbacks with decent quality paper.
And apparently they're not sold it at a loss. Makes you realize how book publishing is a multi-billion dollar industry. It literally costs them nothing to either print or publish a 300 page book.
These were the first books I ever got when learning Italian.
Very cool. I kind of like the cover designs, they're good at what they are.
In Mexico some university presses are somewhat like this. I picked up some mathematical texts, Georg Cantor and the like, for 20 pesos a piece. That comes out to about a euro each. God bless the Instituto Politecnico Nacional, I can't imagine they turn a profit but it's a worthwhile public service.
Not all of the editions are shitty anon, some are worth buying. With Ulysses especially you get the Terrinoni translation with notes and intro for like 1/5 of the price of the Bompiani one which it's just the old one reworked - and his are the most readable translations we have in Italian. He also won prizes for it.
Also, for Italian authors, you spend less and literally get the same text as other publishing houses.
Another super cheap publisher in Germany is Reclam - they don't do complete works in one volume like NC, but you can buy bilingual editions for less than 10 euros and they have a very wide choice.
But I can't think of any other publisher selling bilingual classics for these prices. In italy the market for this kind of stuff it's kind of unique - even for BUR you can get Plato's Republic or Sophist for about 13 euros, with Greek, footnotes and a 50+ pages intro by prominent Italian scholars. In the UK you buy the bilingual text for 20 euros alone, and commentaries (either on the text or on the philosophy, rarely together) you buy separate for about the same price.
However, we compensate by not giving any space to good living authors, even when they are classics, by barely publishing their works or pushing them for translation, etc. In Italy if you're not dead, you can't be an author.
Anon slightly off topic but you seem to know a lot about Italian publishing. I finally acquired enough Italian to read most modern fiction ( Gruppo 63 stuff aside) and I've been wanting to check out some classical Greek and Latin authors in translation. Problem is there are so many transitions I don't really know where to start.
Any direction in terms of writers and publishers would be more than welcome.
>check out some classical Greek and Latin authors in translation
Nta but if you want to check out the iliad go for the translation by Rosa Clazecchi Onesti rather than the Vincenzo Monti one
Thanks. Will do. any particular reason why?
>the Bompiani one which it's just the old one reworked
So you don't think it's worth the price? It looks like a very good edition.
https://www.bompiani.it/catalogo/ulisse-9788845296383
It is absolutely worth the price in my opinion. It has the original english, five essays from scholars, two maps of the location visited, summaries from the chapters, and footnotes for everything. It is better than most annotated editions I consulted in the original, to be fair, and we are very very lucky to have this.
But we are even luckier that, if you don't have 50 euros, you also have the newton compton for like 5 euros from the same translator - still a very good and very readable translation, still with intro and summaries and footnotes. Also very easy to carry around, compared to the Bompiani's.
Overall both are great, but if you want to do a deep reading of Ulysses, or start properly studying the text, I'd definitely go for the Bompiani - it' a israeliteel.
I do not know that much, but if you can read and understand Italian well enough to go into the literature, there are actually quite a good hand of contemporaries that are definitely worth reading.
The main three for me would be Antonio Moresco, Aldo Busi and Walter Siti - this is kind of a holy trinity of Italian living (old) writers at the moment, and they are very well known.
For an overview of Moresco's magnum opus, check this (I think Clandestinità and Lo sbrego are very good to intro to his writing before jumping into Giochi dell'eternità):
>https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/games-of-eternity-giochi-delleternita-by-antonio-moresco/
Of Aldo Busi, definitely get Seminario sulla gioventù because it's one of the best italian novels in general.
For Walter Siti: Scuola di nudo and Troppi paradisi are considered very good. He has incredible prose but I find it a bit navel-gazing at point. Still a great contemporary.
And, though not as recent, absolutely DO read Goliarda Sapienza despite her absolutely ridiculous name. L'arte della gioia it's a fantastic book, and all her autobiographical writings are incredible. Another very good female writer is Elsa Morante - Menzogna e sortilegio is a great family saga. Sapienza is better though: extremely well read, brings the language wherever she wants - a genius.
I'd also say Tiziano Scarpa, Kamikaze d'occidente is pretty fun; a bit of Giulio Mozzi if you feel like going through his short stories (his novel is so and so); Dario Voltolini's last book, Invernale, is apparently very good; and Ferrovie del Messico from Gian Marco Griffi has been very talked about in the last couple of years, and it's a genuinely well written, fun and adventurous book. There's a lot more btw (Massimiliano Parente for instance I haven't read but they tell me he's very good) to discover!
Wow thank you so much, you are an absolute wealth of information. This is enough to keep me occupied for the next year, easily. Also Moresco looks so much like my father that it's uncanny.
So far I really enjoyed Moravia and surprisingly enjoyed Sciascia (when he isn't writing boilerplate mafia stories) particularly his essays. Verga's Sicilian dialect it was just too difficult , while people like Arbasino make me feel like I'm in 10th grade again, having to jump over to Google translate every other sentence. (I do enjoy the worldly flavor though). Calasso's essays were surprisingly a disappointment and made me kind of weary of starting KA. While Croce is a surprisingly sensible literary critic.
Anyway I have a single Cristina Campo essay left and I'm going to jump into L' arte della gioia. Thank you so much for the effort post, it is absolutely appreciated.
You are very welcome anon. This was all tough info for me to get and I am happy to share: you'd be surprised how many italian readers are unaware of the gems our contemporary literature has to offer. I hope one day that many of these authors get a bit more visibility abroad. Some are translated, like Busi, others not, like Moresco.
If you are going into Goliarda Sapienza, there are some very beautiful things you can find on YouTube:
This is a documentary on her life and editorial history, very worth watching.
Here a long interview with her where she tells lots of things about her life and love stories - she goes into detail in describing how having sex with Kundera is:
Here she talks about her experience of prison after stealing some israeliteels from a rich friend so that she could keep writing - very nice to notice the disproportion between her intelligence and sensibility and the abismal stupidity of her interviewer:
I wish this had some English captions since I find spoken Italian really difficult to follow. I'm in an absurd situation where I can read Italian but I can't speak or understand it past the first sentence. I now have some Italian friends so I was hoping that would change but they all want to talk in English.
My original reason for learning the language was poetry. And In terms of poetry I've read scattered bits of Leopadi, Dante, Petrarch, Garducci (something I'm not getting there) , Foscolo, D'Annunzio, Montale, Pavese, Ungaretii, Quasimodo and just yesterday Campo.
As you can tell I'm still in that early, enraptured stage of love where the language can do no wrong.
If you have any recommendations from that world it'd be more than welcome.
I heard that their translation of foreign authors was garbage so i never bought anything form them
These look like they're not marketed toward anyone who actually reads, but just need something for their shelves. They reminds me of the Goethe image scene in Steppenwolf.
You do know you can buy the republic for 5 euro on Amazon don't you?
Send me a link to a bilingual Republic for five euros.
I still can't get over the fact that there are non-Americans, let alone non-English speakers, who read Lovecraft.
My Mexican friends eat it up with a spoon, many of which can't speak or read in English.
What's so hard to believe? Houellebecq read him in French when he was a teenager and even wrote a book on him
>dirt cheap bilingual classics
Reclam
Shitalians have this and Germans have Reclam. Greek language texts for pennies.
Meanwhile Anglo and Frenchgods suffer having to pay $30 for a Loeb or $50 for Bude
i remember the first book in italian that i've read was St Augustine's Confessions, by this puplisher
Based
yesss!
going to mass now, but later will reread some parts
was reading l'Idea del Theatro and it reminded me of Augustine's takes on the power of memory
I got The Republic for $1 at a library.
No one understands me. No one understands what it's like to be a 7 foot tall male rape victim.