Walter Murch

Walter Murch , a film editor, sound designer, director and subject of Michael Ondaatje’s The Conversations, has been translating Curzio Malaparte’s work since 1997.

Letter

‘The Traitor’

28 July 2011

Maurizio Serra writes that the text of ‘The Traitor’, part of Malaparte’s Journal d’un étranger à Paris, was originally written in Italian rather than French (Letters, 8 September). In doing my translation of ‘The Traitor’, I was working from the Denoël edition of the Journal published in Paris in 1967. The book’s introduction stresses the fact that Malaparte wrote his journal sometimes...

Story: ‘The Traitor’

Curzio Malaparte, translated by Walter Murch, 28 July 2011

The burial took place the next day. In a clearing in the woods where the little cemetery was located, a grave had been blasted by dynamite out of the frozen earth. A group of Finnish soldiers was arranged along one side of the grave, and the flag of Franco’s Spain had been placed at the bottom. The snow covering the ground nearby glowed softly in the milky daylight. The coffin was carried by four of the prisoners, followed in procession by Ambassador de Foxá, General Edqvist, myself, the Spanish prisoners and finally by a few Finnish soldiers. The priest kept himself apart, about fifty feet away.

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