Anita Raja was born in 1953 [7] in Naples, Italy, the daughter of a teacher named Golda Frieda Petzenbaum, and Renato Raja, a Neapolitan magistrate. Raja's maternal family was Polish-Jewish though her mother was born in Worms, in Germany. The family fled Nazi Germany for Italy in 1937.[8][9] From the age of 3, Anita Raja was raised in Rome.[10]
After Christa Wolf’s death, in 2011, Raja wrote a short essay to commemorate her mentor and inspiration, who had also become a dear friend:
"The assiduous study of the words of an author generates affinity, closeness. If the person writing is a great writer, translating becomes an experience that profoundly enriches she who translates. Her work of verbalization acted upon my poorer and more common work of welcoming into my language. Her work strengthened mine, leading me to paths I never would have thought of taking. To the point that I had the impression that the texts of Christa were expressing me, that I would have liked to write them just as they were written, that Christa wrote them thinking of me. But translating Christa Wolf I also—and above all—came to understand that the relationship between two languages ends up developing though the relationship between two people: and Christa, whom I met in 1984, revealed herself from the very first moment to be a model of humanity, closeness, concreteness, curiosity, attention, generosity. Always, right up to the end, when we heard from each other, she would first of all ask questions about children, family, health, work, about politics and vacations, about common and quotidian things, at length and with real attention, and then almost seamlessly we would be talking about books or problems of translation."[20]
Talks and lectures
Raja's talks at the University of Bologna in 2015 include Tradurre Letteratura (Translating Literature) 2015, La traduzione letteraria come ponte fra due culture (Literary Translation as a Bridge Between Two Cultures) 2015, and Interpretatione e Traduzione (Interpretation and Translation) 2012.[21][22]
At the Literary Festival of Mantova, in September 2014, Raja spoke with Sandra Petrignani and Liliana Rampello on Rewriting the Lives of Famous Writers (Margaritte Duras, Jane Austin and Christa Wolf respectively).[23]
In a much published[24][25][26][27][28] lecture, Translation as a Practice of Acceptance, at the New York University at Villa La Pietra near Florence in 2015, Raja said "For thirty-five years I have had a secondary but constant side job as a literary translator from German. I have translated—and continue to translate—essentially for pleasure. Since translation for me has never been a job to pay the bills, I have always been able to choose the texts that interest me, texts of good, even lofty, literary quality, texts requiring an intense involvement."[29]
In 2016, the Italian journalist Claudio Gatti published the claim that Raja was the author behind the pen name Elena Ferrante. He gained access to a document showing payments from Ferrante's publisher commensurate with a large increase in book sales.[30][31][32][33]
The quartet of Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante that begins with My Brilliant Friend has sold more than 5.5 million sets in 42 countries, with more than 2 million copies sold in the U.S.A. It is published in America by Europa Editions.[34]
In 2017, Arjuna Tuzzi and Michele A. Cortelazzo of the University of Padova published research comparing the use of the Italian language in Ferrante's seven published novels with 150 novels by 39 authors, published in Italian over the preceding 30 years.[35]
The question of Ferrante's identity continued in 2018 when My Brilliant Friend was dramatised on HBO and RAI TV and on stage in London at the Royal National Theatre. [36][37] By mid 2024, the New York Times was still publishing articles about the real identity of Elena Ferrante.[38]
Ferrante has said in many email interviews organised via her publishers, that being anonymous is crucial to her writing. "I have gained a space of my own, a space that is free, where I feel active and present. To relinquish it would be very painful."[39] Whatever the identity of Elena Ferrante, which a great many fans would prefer to leave unexplored, the feminist view is central to the work of Christa Wolf, the German writer most often foregrounded by Anita Raja in her work as translator.[40][41][42] For her part, Ferrante has said in an interview, “We women have been pushed to the margins, towards subservience, even when it comes to our literary work. The female story, told with increasing skill, increasingly widespread and unapologetic, is what must now assume power."[43]
Other work
Raja was the Director of the municipal European Library (Biblioteca Europea) in Rome, a collaboration between the Goethe Institute and the European Parliament, until retiring from the post in 2015.[44][45][46] Raja is a long time editorial consultant at Edizioni E/O, which has published most of her translations and other works. The company has offices in Rome, Milan, London and New York and Europea Editions is their American imprint.[47]
Personal life
Raja is married to the novelist and screenwriter Domenico Starnone; they have one daughter together, classicist and translator Viola Starnone.[48]
Awards
In 2007, Raja received a German–Italian translator award.[49]
