Giovanni TisoGiovanni Tiso

Giovanni Tiso is a writer and translator based in Wellington. He is a regular contributor to the Australian literary journal Overland, and his blog Bat Bean Beam earned him a nomination as best blogger at the 2014 Canon Media Awards – won, famously, by Whaleoil. Giovanni was born in Milan in 1971.

The Miramar Central scandal lays bare a cavalier culture at the Ministry of Education

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A Wellington school’s use of a ‘seclusion room’ to isolate autistic children has been dismissed by officials as a sorry aberration. But the school cell speaks to a much bigger problem with special education in New Zealand, says Giovanni Tiso, the father of two children with autism. There are few things more distressing and painful … Read more

The far-fetched true story of a meteorically successful American writer who decided to write in Italian: Giovanni Tiso on Jhumpa Lahiri

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Giovanni Tiso on American writer Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book, written in Italian, and put back into English by Elena Ferrante’s translator. What?     In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, Borges tells the story of a man who embarks on a project to rewrite Don Quixote word for word, not merely as a copy, … Read more

A wonderful dream: Tony Blair on the guillotine

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Giovanni Tiso reviews Broken Vows, a biography of Tony Blair by Tom Bowers. There was that time Tony Blair dropped a jar full of honey in the kitchen, and got down on his knees to clean up the mess with a brush and pan. Or that other time when the bath was overflowing upstairs and … Read more