?Paolo Bartolini links translation to time, exile, and writing, presenting them as ?modes and categories of being? in the framework of a critical discussion of Western metaphysics. The book?s central idea is ?potentiality?, of which Bartolini intends to examine the ?philosophical, aesthetic, social and ethical relevance? by highlighting its capacity to ?produce meaning by defying closure?. Through the works of major thinkers and literary authors, from Heidegger, Benjamin, Bataille, and Derrida to Kafka, Blanchot, Leopardi, Caproni, and Agamben among many others, he thus investigates the implications of a discourse on ontology and temporality which, with its discontinuities and heterogeneity, substantiates the very capacity for openness and plurality that charactizes potentiality. Each of the four chapters (Translation, Time, Exile, Writing - ND) relates potentiality to questions emerging from a specific topic. (?) This truly comparative and interdisciplinary study deserves praise for its analysis of many voices of the Italian literary and philosophical panorama of the last two centuries (some of them still neglected, such as Caproni or Virno), with which Bartolini engages in a wider European intellectual context. (?) The book is most successful precisely at a local level, for its many inspiring rapprochements which, working as self-contained studies, provide original and sophisticated perspectives on key concepts of Western thought.? (NICOLETTA PIREDDU in Annali d'italianistica, 2010, pp.451-453).