21st century best-sellers

I would like to show you the 21st century best-sellers of Italian literature.

1. 'La rabbia e l'orgoglio' is a book written by Oriana Fallacci. Controversial commentary on Islam and European Muslims, originally published as a series of articles in the Correre della Sera. 'La rabia e l'orgoglio' (The Rage and the Pride) have been translated into idiosyncratic English by Fallaci herself

2. 'Io non ho paura' by Niccolò Ammaniti. Someday a boy finds a kidnap victim in an old farmhouse and then discovers his parents are in on the sercret. Ammaniti got the idea for the book during a road trip to Apulia in the late 1990s. The story is based on a true story of a kidnapped boy from Milan drugin the Anni di Piombo in the 1970s, a time of terrorism in Italy. At the time, it was common to kidnap people from the North and transport them to the South, where they would be hidden and sametimes killed inless the ransom was paid.

3. 'Senza sangue' by Allesandro Baricco. A young girl hides from the muderers of her parents, but grows up to avenge their deaths.

4. '100 colpi di spazzola prima di andare a dormire' by Melissa Panarello. Blockbuster diary of a schoolgirl's sexual odyssey. Melissa's secret life is concealed from family and friends, revealed only in her diary entries.

5. 'La pazienza del ragno' by Andrea Camilleri. The eighth in the wildly popular Insepctor Montalbano series of crime novels.

6. 'Gomorra' by Roberto Saviano. A frightening non fiction novel about the Camorra, the Naples mafia. The author lives in hiding following death threats. In this book Saviano employs prose and news-reporting style to narrate the story of the Camorra, exposing its territory and business connections.

Ferdydurke - translation problems

Gombrowicz's language is very difficult because the Polish author used several types of idiomatic Polish-colloquial, the language of Polish peasants and the literary language. Difficult words to translate is Polish exclamations like "Jakże!". It was trasnlated by Danuta Borchardt as "Oh, sure!". The same problem is with the word "onegdaj" as "once" and "chłystek" like "a juvenile". Another problem is the Polish prefix "niedo" which was trasnlated as "not quite" - "niedoświadek ludzi niedoludzkich" as "the little not-quite world of the not-quite humans".
Moreover, the use of diminutives is very pervalent in Polish. Gombrowicz used them in the service of the ridiculous. The sentence "noga stała się nóżką, ręka - rączką, istota - stotką, dzieło - dziełkiem, ciało - ciałkiem" was translated by Danuta as "my leg became a little leg, my hand - a little hand, my persona - a little persona, my being - a little being, my oeuvre - a little oeuvre." Another problem is inversion which in Polish appears and changes style. As an example is "Słowacki wielkim poetą był" - Danuta, in order to make it more similar to the Polish original, translated it as "Because Słowacki - oh, what a great poet he was". The novel is really challenge for translators.