Linda Lappin

Lappin's award-winning translation of a contemporary
classic, Fratelli by Carmelo Samonà

From the text

"For many years now I have been living in an old flat in the heart of the city with my brother, who is ill.
  We live alone and visitors are rare. The last
survivors of a family that was quite large when I was young, we now move within a complex hierarchy of silences. The location of our flat, high above the city lying invisible at our feet, and the vastness of the adjoining terraces (to which we do not have access, but which we can see from all the windows on our floor) assure us of a quiet yet false seclusion. In the distance we can hear a faint blending of sounds:the muffled clatter of streets and courtyards, the bustling about in the neighboring flats which echo up to us. But these blurred voices congeal our silence rather than disturb it, permeating it with confused vibrations and with the traces of lives which remain obscure....