The Ship for Kobe

Dacia Maraini’s memoir, The Ship for Kobe, features a series of recollections which weave her mother’s diaries written in 1939, when the family embarked for Kobe, Maraini’s own travels with Italian luminaries of the era, such as Fellini, Callas, Moravia, and Pasolini, and the profound experience of the concentration camp for anti-fascists in Nagoya, where the family was deported.

Dacia Maraini is an Italian writer. Maraini’s work focuses on women’s issues, and she has written numerous plays and novels. She has won awards for her work, including the Formentor Prize for L’età del malessere (1963); the Premio Fregene for Isolina(1985); the Premio Campiello and Book of the Year Award for La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990); and the Premio Strega for Buio (1999). In 2013, Irish Braschi’s biographical documentary I Was Born Travelling told the story of her life, focusing in particular on her imprisonment in a concentration camp in Japan during World War II and the journeys she made around the world with her partner Alberto Moravia and close friends Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas. Her most recent novel, Sguardo a Oriente, was published in May 2022.

Genni Gunn is an author, musician and translator. She has published thirteen books: three novels -- SOLITARIA (longslisted for the Giller Prize), TRACING IRIS (made into a film, The Riverbank), and THRICE UPON A TIME (finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize); three short story collections -- PERMANENT TOURISTS (finalist for the ReLit Award), HUNGERS, and ON THE ROAD; three poetry collections -- ACCIDENTS, FACELESS and MATING IN CAPTIVITY (finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award), and a collection of personal essays, TRACKS: JOURNEYS IN TIME AND PLACE.

She has also translated from Italian three collections of poems by two renowned Italian authors: DEVOUR ME TOO (finalist for the John Glassco Translation Prize) and TRAVELLING IN THE GAIT OF A FOX (finalist for the Premio Internazionale Diego Valeri for Literary Translation) by Dacia Maraini, and TEXT ME by Corrado Calabrò. Born in Trieste, she lives in Vancouver.