The sun had eased its hold, now the light was so hypnotic and perfect that I wanted it to stay that way forever. It was the time of day when you fell hopelessly in love with that place. I remembered the emotion that overcame Bern every time he gazed deferentially at the countryside at sunset. Would that emotion be handed down? Was it written in some sequence of the genetic code, or would it vanish? I didn’t know. But I hoped it would not be lost. All I could do, someday, was tell my daughter who her father was, try to explain to her what he’d revered and the mistakes he’d made doing so. Convey what, in his short life, he had loved of the earth and of the heavens, unremittingly, with all the abandon and impetus that are granted to a man.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR
Paolo Giordano is the author of the critically acclaimed Like Family and The Human Body, and the international bestseller The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which has been translated into more than forty languages, as well as his new publication, How Contagion Works. Giordano has a PhD in particle physics and is now a full-time writer. He lives in Italy.
Anne Milano Appel, PhD, has been awarded the Italian Prose in Translation Award (2015), the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation (2013), and the Northern California Book Award for Translation, Fiction (2013, 2014). She has translated works by Claudio Magris, Paolo Giordano, Giovanni Arpino, and numerous others.
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Heaven and Earth Page 40
