Found in translation: LA VERITA PERDUTA

For me, seeing my first book in a bookstore for the first time was thrilling--and unnerving.

I bet it's a lot like seeing your kid all grown-up and dressed for the prom, when you weren't even used to the fact that she can walk and talk, never mind ask for the car keys. But to abuse that metaphor just a little more, seeing your book in another language for the first time is perhaps like sending your kid off on a foreign-exchange program, only to have her return wearing black, smoking a Gauloise, and saying things that you might not understand.

Confusing, initially, but really, really cool.

I received copies of La Verita Perduta last week, which is the Italian translation of A Fugitive Truth, my fourth Emma Fielding book. At first, it seemed a little alien--hey, kid, who are you? The cover is very different from the original, with the bright yellow of the "I Classici del Giallo Mondadori" series and an illustration of a man's body and bottle (see below). I don't read Italian (apart from tourist stuff and cognates), but when I flipped through it, I caught the line --Sono Emma Fielding. "I'm Emma Fielding."

Hey! I know that! Hey, I wrote that!

It's neat to recognize specific passages, and I really love seeing Madam Chandler's 18th-century diary in Italian. And then there are the pop culture references that Brian, Emma's husband, makes. He mentions that his philosophy might be derived from un episodio di Buffy l'ammazzavampiri ("an episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'"), and asks Emma, in a Cajun restaurant, O forse preferiresti un Turbo Dog? ("Or maybe you'd prefer a Turbo Dog?" (beer)). Fellow writer Donna Andrews mentioned in her blog that I was dying to see what "nuttier than squirrel burps" would look like in Italian. Alas, it was rendered into idiom as matto come un cavallo, which another Femme Fatale, Julie Wray Herman, suggests might be "crazy as a horse."

Not what you ordinarily find in Berlitz. Thanks, Emma!