‘The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’:
PDF
Reading Imposed PDF
Printing Imposed PDF
Covers & Spine for Printing (8.5x~11.58″, color)
Paperback, ~5.25″ x 8.25″ x 0.58″, 266 pages
“A Mano Armata (Excerpts)”:
PDF
Reading Imposed PDF
Printing Imposed PDF
Covers for Printing (8.5×11″, b&w)
Pamphlet, ~5.4″ x 8.25″, 51 pages
Limited amount of physical copies available, email reekingthickets@proton.me to check availability and get yours – $5 for the book, $2 for the pamphlet (just to cover part of the cost of printing) plus shipping if not local (book weighs ~1lb) If you’re a reading group or bookstore, infoshop, think you can get it into a prison, etc., inquire about possibly reduced cost or free books! We’re still working out the kinks of our very small-scale production process, and this edition is somewhat rough, with some edges trimmed on a slight slant, the occasional smudged or faded line of text, and the possibility of some toner rubbing off over time.
To our knowledge, The Unexpected Guest, A Mano Armata, and many of the included sections of Palestine, Mon Amour haven’t been properly translated into English, and this primarily machine-based translation – though we feel is sufficient for some purposes – certainly can’t be considered as such. Translation was carried out by Nim Thorn, a non-speaker of Italian, using various translation programs with the results then checked for apparent mistakes or divergences and the offending passages re-translated in context with dictionaries and using other translation programs. Short stanzas (such as the section “Untitled” in Palestine, Mon Amour) or metered sections (such as the Faust excerpts in The Unexpected Guest) were also translated word by word using comparisons of multiple tools. The introduction to the second edition of A Mano Armata is a particularly bad translation, of a difficult text in the first place, though some parts of it still shine through quite clearly, and the subject matter – in part about the desire to engage with the word backwards by constructing semio-cognitive labyrinths to reflect absence and help bypass the recuperating tendency of the will and language – feels ironically relevant.
No authorization was sought for this independent, not-intended-for-profit project and, for our part, further printing or distribution is welcomed.
`The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’ brings together a new, rough translation of the 2010 book L’Ospite Inatteso by influential Sicilian insurrectionary anarchist, robber, poet, and philosopher Alfredo Bonanno (and as he reminds us, former motorcycle racer, professional poker player, and business executive) with similar, mostly previously untranslated sections from another book of his, Palestina, Mon Amour, and some relevant excerpts from his essay, “E noi saremo sempre pronti a impadronirci un’altra volta del cielo: Contro l’amnistia” (trans. – “And we will always be ready to storm the heavens again: Against the amnesty”).
An accompanying 51pg. pamphlet, “A Mano Armata (Excerpts)” collects more topical sections from that book of his (the title of which translates as `with armed hand’, or `at gunpoint’ and is part of the Italian legal name of offenses analogous to armed robbery or assault with a deadly weapon, with `a mano‘ also having the sense of a tool ready and available for use, or of `hand-made’, `manually’).
The sharply echoing, often numbered and diary-like stanzas that make up much of the book are a remembrance of the deadly, pro-liberatory armed struggle Bonanno took part in during the `60s and following decades, including alongside Palestinians in the Levant (relating also his experience of torture for this by Mossad in 1972), in Greece against the junta, in Ireland, Algeria, Uganda, and Italy. Written mostly during various later-life prison stints in Italy and Greece for robberies and seditions (both real and fabricated), these poetic, searingly honest tracings of formative, difficult memories grapple with suffering, monstrosity, humanity, and ghostly normality, the silent, irreversible and all-transfiguring singularities of death and of ending the lives of others, and the irresolvable tension between the quantitative and qualitative. The paradoxical, messy engagements with the often deeply flawed, recuperative, and quixotic but sometimes critical aspects of clandestine revolutionary warfare come deeply into play, alongside those with the projects of memory, theoretical and personal understanding, and the word itself. Bonanno refuses to shy away from the stark insights and puzzling question marks born of having closely shadowed and struck at torturers, informers, provocateurs, traitors, cops, and soldiers, and does so without hiding behind either moralism or trite anti-moralist cliches. Reaching us like an esoteric, late medieval folk heretic, Bonanno in these texts feels perfectly attuned to apprehend his and our current moments (in particular their real incomprehensibility), even through such unlikely lenses as his highly ambivalent exegeses of Saint Augustine or Goethe’s Faust.
Footnotes, selections, typesetting, back cover text for the book (the back cover text of the A Mano Armata pamphlet is taken from excerpts of the text), and cover designs are also by Nim Thorn.
