Douglas Grant Heise is a translator with over 15 years of experience working with academic and literary texts in Italy.  During that time, he has produced translations for researchers in artificial intelligence, film theorists, dance company directors, documentary filmmakers, television screenwriters, economists, and novelists.

The fields of study that he specializes in include literary theory, philosophy, film theory, art history, theater studies, and African studies.  He also does translations of women’s studies, gender studies, philosophy, history, economics, sociology, and political science.

He works directly with publishers for translations of literary texts.

Douglas lives in Levanto, on the Italian Riviera.

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PEN TRANSLATION GRANT 2017

In 2017, PEN America began offering a new translation grant award for in-progress work on Italian literature. Douglas Grant Heise was the inaugural winner of the $5,000 prize for his translation of Luigi Malerba’s 1997 novel Itaca per sempre, a retelling of Odysseus’ return to his beloved Penelope from the perspective of both husband and wife.

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Ithaca Forever

Douglas Grant Heise’s translation of Luigi Malerba’s masterful novel is now available for preorder at UCPress, Amazon, and other online booksellers.

After twenty years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, but instead of receiving the homecoming he had hoped for finds himself caught in an intense battle of wills with his faithful and long-suffering wife Penelope. When Penelope recognizes him under the guise of a beggar, she becomes furious with him for not trusting her enough to include her in his plans for ridding the palace of the Suitors.  As a result, she plays her own game of fictions to make him suffer for this lack of faith, inspiring jealousy, self-doubt, and misgivings in her husband, the legendary Homeric hero.

In this captivating retelling of the Odyssey, Penelope rises as a major force with whom to be reckoned. Shifting between first-person reflections, Ithaca Forever reveals the deeply personal and powerful perspectives of both wife and husband as they struggle for respect and supremacy within a marriage that has been on hold for twenty years. Translated by PEN award-winner Douglas Grant Heise, Luigi Malerba’s novel gives us a remarkable version of this greatest work of western literature: Odysseus as a man full of doubts and Penelope as a woman of great depth and strength.

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