At Read This Next Acacia O’Connor talks to Marina Harss, translator of Two Friends by Alberto Moravia.

AO: Two Friends is a unique text–it’s different segments of unfinished works by the great Italian writer Alberto Moravia, rather than an even nearly complete novel manuscript–how do these different segments work together in your mind? What sorts of challenges did this text, which at times misses segments etc., present to you as a translator?

MH: I think the challenge for me was the “unfinished” quality, sorting out the repetitions in the texts, dealing with spots where I knew that Moravia would have cleaned things up. How to be respectful to Moravia while also being completely faithful to the text. Also, I found that in dealing with three unfinished texts, it was more difficult to “get into the flow” and really get to know the characters, their past and their future.