In Farthest Seas

A breathtakingly beautiful novel about the first 4 years and last 4 months of a great love, by a ＂lacerating, luminous＂ Italian author (Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Interpreter of Maladies)

Perfect for fans of short, razor-sharp modern literary classics like Annie Ernaux and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking

Upon the death of her husband, Innocenzo Monti, Lalla Romano sought to distil the essence of their long life together. The result was In Farthest Seas a piercingly intimate retelling of the first 4 years and final 4 months of their relationship, built from shard-like moments of connection and revelation.

The 1st section spans the couple’s early attraction, which developed through long conversations on hikes in the mountains surrounding Cuneo, to their wedding and arrival at their first home together. A subtle note of elegy sounds through these recollections of love, and this note comes to the fore in the longer 2nd section that recounts the final 4 months of Innocenzo’s life.

With precise artistry, Romano braids together seemingly minor details--the expressiveness of Innocenzo’s hands, the beauty of his face in sleep, a fleeting instance of pallor--that come to reveal the barest truths of life and death. Unsparing yet tender, minimal yet monumental, In Farthest Seas is a startlingly moving elegy, and perhaps the greatest work by a rediscovered Italian master, who’s been compared to Natalia Ginzburg and Cesare Pavese.

Graziella ’Lalla’ Romano (1906-2001) was an Italian novelist, poet, translator and visual artist. Initially more interested in painting, from the 1940s Romano turned increasingly to writing, publishing her first poetry collection in 1941. During World War II she returned to her home province of Cuneo and became involved with the partisans. Her first novel, Maria, was published in 1953, and she went on to become one of Italy’s most renowned writers, earning the Pavese Prize and the Strega Prize before her death at the age of 94. Her novel A Silence Shared is also published by Pushkin Press.

Brian Robert Moore has translated A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano, Meeting in Positano by Goliarda Sapienza, and the work of other distinguished Italian authors. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellowship and the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature.