anna and the romans
Anna Lowenstein became interested in the Romans when she visited Italy over thirty years ago, and was awestruck by her first view of the Pantheon. She wondered what impression it must have made on a barbarian who had never seen a stone building before, let alone architecture as magnificent as the houses and temples of Rome. That was the moment when she had the idea for her first novel The Stone City. Not long afterwards she moved to Italy and came to live in the Roman countryside close to the ancient town of Palestrina, which appears in the novel under its Latin name Praeneste. Since then she has written a second novel, Death of an Artist, also set in Ancient Rome, and is now working on a third. Since 2015 she has been living in the UK.
EsPERANTO
Visitors to this page won’t have missed the fact that most of Anna’s books are written in the international language Esperanto.
Anna learnt Esperanto from a book she borrowed from the library at age 13. Since it is the world’s easiest language, she had no difficulty in teaching herself. Forty years ago she started work at the headquarters of the World Esperanto Association, and that’s when she began writing. Since those far-off days she has become a well-known writer, activist and teacher in the international Esperanto movement, and is now one of the team members behind the English-Esperanto course in the language learning app Duolingo. She is also the author of La teorio Nakamura (The Nakamura Theory), a story used as the basis of the Esperanto course on another important teaching site, lernu!
She is married to well-known Italian Esperantist Renato Corsetti, former president of the World Esperanto Association. No prizes for guessing which language the couple speak at home - and naturally their two sons speak it too!
You can read more about Anna’s adventures with Esperanto here.
News
La memoraĵoj de Julia Agripina
August 2021
Anna’s new novel La memoraĵoj de Julia Agripina has just come out in Esperanto. It was launched this summer at the 2nd Virtual World Esperanto Congress, and also at the Italian Esperanto Congress in Assisi. She previously gave a talk about the book (in Esperanto, naturally!) at the London Esperanto Club which is available on YouTube.
Author interview on YouTube
21 May 2021
A half-hour interview with Anna Lowenstein by Chelsea Rae Moses appeared on YouTube. They talk about her experiences in translating her own novels from English into Esperanto, her work on the website uea.facila, the feminist magazine Sekso kaj Egaleco which she founded and edited in the late 70s, and advice for people wanting to write in Esperanto. The interview is in Esperanto with subtitles in English.
Launch of uea.facila
19 January 2019
So this is what Anna has been getting up to for the past few months! She has just launched a new website, aimed at Esperanto learners. It consists of short articles in easy Esperanto, giving news and information about the Esperanto movement and well-known Esperanto personalities.
La teorio Nakamura
20 July 2018
Anna’s story La teorio Nakamura has at last been published as a book, with attractive illustrations by Studio Gaus. Until now it was only possible to read the book chapter by chapter by working through the course at lernu.net, but the story is worth reading in its own right. Based on limited vocabulary for language learners, the story makes use of a classic time-travel paradox. It is an enjoyable read not only for learners but also for more advanced Esperanto speakers.
Author interview on Unusual Historicals
08 January 2017
An interview with Anna Lowenstein about her book
The Stone City appeared in the Unusual Historicals blog. Take a look at the comments section too!
Lenke Szász with Csaba Szabo, publisher of the Hungarian edition of The Stone City.
Hungarian translation wins award
November 2016
Lenke Szász, the Transylvanian translator of The Stone City from Esperanto into Hungarian, received the White Crows award in November 2016 for her translation. The White Crows Media Club is an association which aims for greater understanding between Romanians and the Hungarian speaking minority living in Transylvania. A full-page article about the event appeared in the Hungarian-language Romanian newspaper Népújság.
New Esperanto course in lernu.net
17 July 2016
A new course has just been launched in the important Esperanto teaching site lernu.net. At the heart of the course is Anna Lowenstein’s story La teorio Nakamura, which starts with minimal vocabulary and grammatical structures, and gradually adds vocabulary and more complex grammar in each of the 26 lessons.