“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.

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

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...

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! 🎉

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...

@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

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?).

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

Needless to say, I am INCREDIBLY excited about this! Come celebrate one of the most beautifully devastating books ever with Jhumpa Lahiri – yes, that Jhumpa Lahiri – and me on Sept 4 in New York: www.eventbrite.com/e/in-farthes... @pushkinpress.com

A little Sunday reading from Lalla Romano. The Sick Child, published in @mcsweeneys.net 😨

Thanks to @memoirland.bsky.social for highlighting Walter Siti's "My Poor Parents", pub'ed in @grantamag.bsky.social, in this week's Memoir Monday roundup! 🫶 memoirland.substack.com/p/this-weeks...

You can now read an extract from Walter Siti's Paradise Overload in @grantamag.bsky.social! We'll publish Brian Robert Moore's translation of this Italian classic in 2026. granta.com/my-poor-pare...

A thoughtful, surprise piece on labor, fascism & horror in Verdigris and Clean 💀 I know I talk a lot about wordplay, but Verdigris also "draws direct conclusions between oppressive political systems and the act of disappearing memories, histories, and people," as Kaitlin Bui writes!

Big news: my translation of Walter Siti's novel PARADISE OVERLOAD will be published by @archipelagobooks.bsky.social, and you can now read a favorite excerpt, "My Poor Parents," in @grantamag.bsky.social! So thrilled for Siti's work to be arriving in the Anglosphere: granta.com/my-poor-pare...

Big news: my translation of Walter Siti's novel PARADISE OVERLOAD will be published by @archipelagobooks.bsky.social, and you can now read a favorite excerpt, "My Poor Parents," in @grantamag.bsky.social! So thrilled for Siti's work to be arriving in the Anglosphere: granta.com/my-poor-pare...

Michele Mari's VERDIGRIS, in my translation, has won the PEN Translation Prize. Very grateful to the judges for their consideration of my work and of this important book 💚 @andotherstories.bsky.social

A sea of Lallas 🌊🌊 Working on this was not like translating a book, but like translating a whole human heart. In Farthest Seas is out Aug 26 in the US & Sept 11 in the UK. Fans include Jhumpa Lahiri, Ayşegül Savaş, Catherine Lacey and Natalia Ginzburg! @pushkinpress.com @pushkinpress-us.bsky.social

Verdigris by Michele Mari has been longlisted for the 2025 PEN Translation Prize 🐌 The full list of nominees here: pen.org/announcing-t...

I'm honored my translation of Lalla Romano's A Silence Shared is the runner-up for the John Florio Prize. And I'm thrilled for Lalla, whose work merits all the recognition in the world! 🤍 Thank you @societyofauthors.bsky.social. And congrats to @jennymcphee.bsky.social who's always an inspiration!

Here it is. This one is going to be the big test to see if people ultimately have good taste or not: If Lalla's genius doesn't get appreciated for what it is, I might just drop this whole literary translation thing and set out to sea for good. 🌊🌊

🥰

A little shoutout to Michele Mari's VERDIGRIS in this review of Starnone's latest in @thetls.bsky.social! (Two translations with very different approaches to dialect too.)

underrated books i will always recommend

I'm very happy for these longlisted books! I was heartbroken when a librarian told me he'd hoped to submit a book I translated, but the Italian original was too old. A decade often isn't enough time for a book to arrive in English, especially without big commercial buzz or major lit agencies 🧵

This is excellent fun. A gothic fantasia in which an obsessive hyper-literate teenage narrator turns detective, enlisting the enigmatic savant groundskeeper to probe the mysteries of his family's crumbling property

In her first US performance in over 40 years, Italian poet Mariangela Gualiteri will perform a sonic ritual, followed by a reading by Olivia Sears of her translation and a discussion of the poetry by Natasha Trethaway. See you Weds, Jan. 15 at 6pm at Fordham University McNally Auditorium!

The Bookchemist ranks Michele Mari's VERDIGRIS his second favorite book read in 2024 (or, another way of putting it: it was his *favorite* book that's available in English translation)! 🐛 His full list here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSYJ... @andotherstories.bsky.social

In Farthest Seas in @thoughtofthething.bsky.social's list of books to look out for this year! 🌊

Ayşegül Savaş has now called Lalla Romano's In Farthest Seas "one of the most beautiful books I have ever read" 🎉 Her full quote: "Romano's miraculous work opens layer by layer, always guarding its innermost mystery. This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read." Coming later this year!

This book (in translation) was my favourite read of 2024. Other recommendations of my reading year, Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes, A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano, Clear by Carys Davies, Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal.

Nice to see Michele Mari's Verdigris here, and in the top 5, no less! 🐌

A little year-end surprise for me: Ayşegül Savaş—whose beautiful novel The Anthropologists has been on so many 2024 books lists—has called Lalla Romano’s forthcoming IN FARTHEST SEAS “one of the most mindblowing literary experiences of the year”! Do find room in your 2025 for this one 💝

I have way more than 3!! Leonora Carrington, Hélène Bessette (tr. Kate Briggs), Ingeborg Bachmann (tr. Tess Lewis), Tezer Özlü (tr. Maureen Freely), Marlen Haushofer (tr. Shaun Whiteside), Brigid Brophy, Jane Ellen Harrison, Lauren Markham, Kate Zambreno, Lalla Romano (tr. Brian Robert Moore)

Recently read: a story of a boy and his fascination with a grizzled old groundskeeper whose memory is slipping away, gothic-tinged and full of surreal linguistic trickery. Such a fantastically done translation! // @andotherstories.bsky.social

We have a cover! Lalla Romano's masterpiece IN FARTHEST SEAS Called "an extraordinarily powerful book" by Jhumpa Lahiri & "a miracle" by Marina Jarre, I simply don't think people will see love, death or Italian lit the same way after this one. Now in time for your 2025 lists 🌊 @pushkinpress.com

Please report this fake Catherine account: bsky.app/profile/cath...

favorite reads of 2024

The translators that @newyorker.com failed to mention in their Best Books of 2024 are those whose names do not appear on the front covers. The translators who are named on the front cover are mentioned in the New Yorker’s listing. A good example of why being named on the front cover matters.

Verdigris x Michele Mari, @brianrobmoore.bsky.social (tr.) / @andotherstories.bsky.social All of the heebs, and WHAT an ending. hararereview.wordpress.com/2024/01/04/v...

Zachary Issenberg includes Michele Mari's Verdigris in his Year in Reading for The Millions. From slugs to whales! 🐳 @andotherstories.bsky.social themillions.com/2024/12/year...

Announcing n+1’s Winter 2025 issue: RERUN! Featuring new writing by: @hzeavin.bsky.social @njdames.bsky.social Rachel Khong @tavlin.bsky.social Mina Tavakoli Dawn Lundy Martin Bassem Saad Jill Crawford Alan Dean Claire Baglin, and @markkrotov.bsky.social nplusonemag.com/subscribe

The incredible Sara Baume gave this beautiful reading of a chapter of Lalla Romano's A Silence Shared. Thought I'd share this week to celebrate! 💙 From an event at Books Upstairs in Dublin. @societyofauthors.bsky.social @pushkinpress.com @societyofauthors.bsky.social soundcloud.com/brmoore/sara...