The European Union Center extends big congratulations to Eda Derhemi, Teaching Associate Professor of Italian and EU Center affiliate faculty, and Francesco Ferrari, PhD candidate in Italian, who recently received a literary translation award from the Albanian Ministry of Culture and the National Center for Books and Reading for “Miele sul coltello” (Besa Editrice, 2020), an Italian translation of the Albanian novel “Mjaltë në teh” by Romeo Çollaku.

A polyphonic novel whose title translates to "honey on the knife's edge" in English, “Mjaltë në teh” narrates the everyday lives of people from an isolated mountainous village in southern Albania over the course of three decades, from Italian and German occupation during World War II through the late 1960s, when Albania was ruled by Enver Hoxha's totalitarian government. 

The EU Center recently conducted an interview with Derhemi and Ferrari, in which the translators discussed difficulties that the novel presented, the unique challenges of translating from Albanian into Italian, their collaborative process, and much more. Read the full interview on the EUC blog here.