Vera/The Ends of Stories. Approche génétique de la traduction d’un roman sans fin

Born in the Liège suburbs, grandson of Italian immigrants, Jean-Pierre Orban gained fame as a novelist with Vera (2014). The work blends French, Italian and English to tell the story of an Italian woman who embraces fascism in the UK in the deceptive hope that it will forge an identity for her. The novel has been translated into English by James Thomas (The Ends of Stories, 2020). This work saw a long and intense collaboration between the translator and the writer, helped by his Franco-English wife and by his sister-in-law. This article deals with the genetics of The Ends of Stories, through the case study of the first chapter. It analyzes the private material of the writer: from the published version of the work to its first drafts annotated by the collaborators in the English translation. It aims to show that Orban’s archive is a privileged space for discovering the evolution of the novel, a text in eternal movement, plural and forever unfinished.