"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

The Shrimp-Prince

I received a lovely rejection yesterday, detailing why the agency can’t undertake representation of my project and prompting me to submit more works in the future. I know it might be a form and all, but it was a kind form nonetheless.

Back to business, this means my patrons get another fairy tale, and this time it’s free for all: it’s another original translation of a story by Guido Gozzano, a late-XIX-Century Italian symbolist poet, and it features the story of a Prince who gets cursed to… go backwards. He walks like a Shrimp, even when he’s on horseback, and most importantly, he starts rejuvenating. Francis Scott Fitzgerald‘s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (you might remember the movie) is from 1922, while this story is from around 1901.
Weird, right?
The same theme of a man ageing backwards can be found in the 1989 science fiction novel Hyperion by American author Dan Simmons, in which the structures known as “Time Tombs” are pockets where time runs backwards. Bradley Cooper is making a movie out of it.

Anyway, the full text of the fairy tale is in the Patreon post, which, as I said, this time is not behind the subscription.

Kathleen Jamie on Attention and Corridors

Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish poet and essayist, born in 1962, known for her prose and poetry about landscape, place, and everyday life. Findings is her essay collection of personal reflections, first published in 2005, and it moves through nature and cities, archaeology, hospitals, family

Read More »
comics and illustration

Leo Ortolani, Tapum

A un certo punto ci sarà una battuta, in questo fumetto, e riderete. Sappiate che è l’unica. Com’è giusto che sia. Se devo paragonare quest’opera a qualcosa, il confronto più azzeccato è probabilmente lo spettacolo che Marco Paolini trasse dal Sergente nella neve di Rigoni

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Summertime

Omeros in the Caribbeans

Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, and one of the major voices of Caribbean literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, and his work often explores Caribbean history, identity, colonial inheritance, and the meeting of European and African

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Kathleen Jamie on Attention and Corridors

Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish poet and essayist, born in 1962, known for her prose and poetry about landscape, place, and everyday life. Findings is her essay collection of personal reflections, first published in 2005, and it moves through nature and cities, archaeology, hospitals, family

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Leo Ortolani, Tapum

A un certo punto ci sarà una battuta, in questo fumetto, e riderete. Sappiate che è l’unica. Com’è giusto che sia. Se devo paragonare quest’opera a qualcosa, il confronto più azzeccato è probabilmente lo spettacolo che Marco Paolini trasse dal Sergente nella neve di Rigoni

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Omeros in the Caribbeans

Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, and one of the major voices of Caribbean literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, and his work often explores Caribbean history, identity, colonial inheritance, and the meeting of European and African

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