Brian Robert Moore

Italian Autumn Reads Editor's Choice: As the nights draw in and the air gets chillier, the autumn months are the perfect time for some serious book indulgence.

Editor's Choice - The autumn months are the perfect time for serious book indulgence as the nights draw in and the air gets chillier.
For more information on my book choices, go to Substack > writersretreatitaly.substack.com/p/italian-au...

Words for Worlds - Issue 105 Hello everyone, and welcome to another issue of Words for Worlds.

It’s the first Monday of the month, so here’s a new issue of Words for Worlds, the F-SF newsletter with an Indian slant:

gautambhatia.substack.com/p/words-for-...

feat. In Farthest Seas, writing the sequel to THE SENTENCE, Strange Horizons @ 25, Einstein’s Dreams, and more.

Thanks, Kim! Yes, she is fascinating, and was very daring for the time too. Maybe I've shared this one with you before, but here's Lalla with Innocenzo and their friend Gigi, like in the first part of the book.

💚💚

Glad you'd recommend the Romano, Kim – thank you for reading and, belatedly, happy birthday!

CÉCÉ by Emmelie Prophète (tr. Aidan Rooney) THE ENDLESS WEEK by Laura Vazquez (tr. Alex Niemi) THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF H. LAN THAO LAM by Lana Lin GRACE PERIOD by Maria Judite de Carvalho (tr. Margaret Jull Costa) ANIMAL STORIES by Kate Zambreno INTO THE WEEDS by Lydia Davis THE WAX CHILD by Olga Ravn (tr. Martin Aitken) HELEN OF NOWHERE by Makenna Goodman DREAMING OF DEAD PEOPLE by Rosalind Belben GOOSE OF HERMOGENES by Ithell Colquhoun IN FARTHEST SEAS by Lalla Romano (tr. Brian Robert Moore) RESTORATION by Ave Barrera (tr. Ellen Jones & Robin Myers) MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf ORLANDA by Jacqueline Harpman (tr. Ros Schwartz) THE OTHER GIRL by Annie Ernaux (tr. Alison L. Strayer) SAY FIRE by Selma Asotić LITTLE WORLD by Josephine Rowe THE INNER LIFE OF MRS. DALLOWAY by Edward Mendelson ALPHA AND OMEGA by Jane Ellen Harrison

I have a pile of new Aug/Sep publications to read (birthday month acquisitions). 🎂🎉 I’ve only finished three so far (Zambreno, Romano & Mendelson—all recommended), so I have a long way to go. Ravn & Lin are next!

25 I was with Silvia on Corso Nizza, so empty and sun-drenched in those days. She looked at me and said, with an expression of shock and admiration: 'You seem like Tess!' It was a grave thing to say. We had just read Tess of the d'Urbervilles: what she meant I don't know, but it helped me define my somewhat dreamy state, between blissful and dis-tressed. Almost as though I were truly going to be 'sacrificed', even if 'crowned with flowers'. I had never said it to myself, but I thought, or rather I felt, that getting married was something fatal, abyssal in fact, a kind of death. I intuited a sense of risk, which was exhilarating too, but detached from me, from our story. Almost an investiture: for some unknown end.

Lalla Romano

“Where are the dead?”

—In Farthest Seas, Lalla Romano; tr. @brianrobmoore.bsky.social

Spending the day with @brianrobmoore.bsky.social’s wonderful translation of Lalla Romano’s In Farthest Seas.

Believe it was @jacquiwine.bsky.social and @joiedevivre9.bsky.social – thanks again to both of you for your interest! 🌊

Some readers & friends on here asked if this would be recorded, so I'm happy to share my conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri about Lalla Romano's In Farthest Seas: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIHC...
Can't watch a video of myself but I assume it's all there! @pushkinpress-us.bsky.social @pushkinpress.com

A beautiful review of Lalla Romano's In Farthest Seas from @ronanhession.bsky.social in today's Irish Times!
"It’s a sign of the quality of the writing[...] that even when reading analytically as a reviewer, I often found myself putting the book down still in a dream of its voice." @pushkinpress.com

Fiction in translation: Yang Hao an exciting new voice in Chinese – and Irish – literature In Farthest Seas; Blurred; Cécé; Diablo’s Boys; and Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide reviewed

My @irishtimes.com fiction in translation column is now online for subscribers.

Fiction from Romania, Italy, Haiti, China and Gaza.

Fiction in translation: Yang Hao an exciting new voice in Chinese – and Irish – literature

www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Thank you, I hope you'll like A Silence Shared too!

Thank you for this beautiful review, Rónán! I'm so glad you enjoyed In Farthest Seas.

A beautiful review of Lalla Romano's In Farthest Seas from @ronanhession.bsky.social in today's Irish Times!
"It’s a sign of the quality of the writing[...] that even when reading analytically as a reviewer, I often found myself putting the book down still in a dream of its voice." @pushkinpress.com

Congratulations to @brianrobmoore.bsky.social, whose translation of Verdigris by Michele Mari has been shortlisted for the 2025 @littranslate.bsky.social Italian Prose in Translation Award! 🎉

Belated thanks for sharing this, Bronwen.

Lalla Romano Was Writing Autofiction Before It Existed “It’s nice to have confirmation, in the midst of a literary world where everyone loses their minds or in some way grows stupid, that you are a serious person, forging ahead with your story, your li…

ICYMI, for @literaryhub.bsky.social I wrote about why you’ll never read another author like Lalla Romano. With some reflections on what it meant for me to translate a book as devastating & before-its-time as In Farthest Seas. @pushkinpress.com @pushkinpress-us.bsky.social
lithub.com/lalla-romano...

Lalla Romano Was Writing Autofiction Before It Existed “It’s nice to have confirmation, in the midst of a literary world where everyone loses their minds or in some way grows stupid, that you are a serious person, forging ahead with your story, your li…

lithub.com/lalla-romano...

Lalla Romano Was Writing Autofiction Before It Existed “It’s nice to have confirmation, in the midst of a literary world where everyone loses their minds or in some way grows stupid, that you are a serious person, forging ahead with your story, your li…

@brianrobmoore.bsky.social examines autofiction, grief, and Lalla Romano’s ahead of its time masterpiece, In Farthest Seas.
buff.ly/nFnYaVY

TONIGHT!!

New @fallowmedia.bsky.social with a Marguerite Duras film script & companion essays by Daniel Fraser & myself, Lisa Robertson on Adnan, Maija Makela on Notley, Owen Hatherley, Stephen Sexton, Lalla Romano, JC Vaughan, Maria Sledmere, Devki Panchmatia & Russell Persson fallowmedia.com/shop/fallow-02

Thank you for sharing, Rónán!

A faint cover of a Silence Shared featuring a woman's side profile behind a net curtain.

Turquoise cover framing a portrait of a woman with blonde hair and dark clothes, standing and looking out.

Book post!

A Silence Shared by Italian writer Lalla Romano, translated by Brian Robert Moore.

Nothing Grows by Midnight by Torberg Nedreaas, translated from Norwegian by Bibbi Lee (recommended by @radzpandit.bsky.social I think?).

Natalia Ginzburg called Lalla Romano's writing "beautiful, fecund, vivifying," and the reactions from writers today to In Farthest Seas have been just as exciting. Out now with @pushkinpress-us.bsky.social and coming out in two weeks in the UK & Ireland with @pushkinpress.com!

Out today in the US! 🌊
Translating this masterpiece on love & death was one of the great emotional journeys of my life. Lalla Romano feels so relevant to how we think about writing today, it leaves me speechless—can't wait for readers to take this voyage: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/783140...

Now just two weeks away (and Lalla Romano's In Farthest Seas will be out in the US in just a few days)! I'm told this event with Jhumpa might be on the crowded side, so rsvp and come early if you can: www.eventbrite.com/e/in-farthes... @pushkinpress.com @pushkinpress-us.bsky.social

Now just two weeks away (and Lalla Romano's In Farthest Seas will be out in the US in just a few days)! I'm told this event with Jhumpa might be on the crowded side, so rsvp and come early if you can: www.eventbrite.com/e/in-farthes... @pushkinpress.com @pushkinpress-us.bsky.social

My pleasure!