Apulian Days
Enemy of your enemy
The modest amount of insight I have come to acquire about the tortured history of Afghanistan in recent decades I owe to a translation project that, over time, stopped being [...]
Journalists in the crosshairs
One cannot be worried enough about the future of journalism. The profession is becoming a riskier business than ever before, and the pursuit of investigative journalism in particular is increasingly [...]
The “homecoming” that wasn’t
Before the Euro 2020 final that pitted England against Italy, English fans upped a chant that in the days before the July 11 final increased in volume if not conviction. [...]
From one Down Under to another
Ages ago, one of the features in the still popular "Reader’s Digest" magazine was a feature called “My most unforgettable character.” Aside from our (more or less close) relatives, we [...]
Life before lenses
It took me the first twelve years of my life to discover glasses, or at least their full utility. Not that I hadn’t seen them before, but they were always [...]
The English on the hill
Thirty years ago, on March 8, 1991, the eminent English food writer Patience Gray published “South to the Salento,”for a "New York Times" supplement known as "The Sophisticated Traveler." The [...]
The Hungarian connection
As a youth in the 1960s, I became intoxicated with listening to the wireless, as radio was called in its early days. I was enthralled by that magic box from [...]
My debt to Ol’ Blue Eyes
When you learn a foreign language by teaching yourself, what you miss the most is the possibility of speaking in that language, whether just to practice it or to train [...]
How fragile we are
From the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were hints in the press and suspicion in the medical community that the virus might find a nest not only in [...]
The making of a translator
Things we long for sometimes seem to come true by chance. Or maybe it is a question of choice and destiny, as my Russian friend, the late writer, essayist, and [...]
How green was my valley
This is a cautionary tale, though it may not seem like one at first. In fact, at first it will be a tale about beauty. In that vein, travelers to [...]
The sands of time
Light rain had fallen for most of a virtually sleepless stormy night a few weeks ago. I got up around 6 a.m., when the south-easterly sirocco gale that had blown [...]
Author
Aldo Magagnino was born in Alezio (Apulia). After a career as a teacher of English he now works fulltime as a literary translator. He now lives in the Apulian town of Presicce, a few miles from Santa Maria di Leuca, land’s end of the Italian boot, with his wife, two dogs and a variable number of cats.