ABSTRACT
In the epilogue, Andrea Palermitano uses the knowledge and resources accumulated through his involvement in the Laboratorio Calvino at the Sapienza University in Rome, which builds a rich archive around Calvino’s literary legacy and maps his presence and translations around the world. Palermitano begins by showing how language and translation are at the core of Invisible Cities and Calvino’s writerly practice, and then provides a rich and detailed overview of the translations of the book around the globe. Palermitano’s largely chronological overview moves from the first full translations in French, Spanish and English in 1974, followed by translations in Polish, German, Danish, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian, to those in Japanese, Romanian and Hungarian, to the many later in new languages and alphabets (including, recently, Tamil, Indonesian, Albanian, Malayalam, Georgian, Vietnamese and Thai). Despite the broad scope of the research, Palermitano manages to include important details on publishing context as well, such as the publication of paperbacks, political factors and recent important relaunches or retranslations. The conclusion elegantly circles back to the book itself, connecting the various interlingual exchanges in the book to its multilingual presence in the world.
