The publishing house Pushkin Press has organised an event dedicated to the Italian writer, Lalla Romano, and her book “Tetto Murato / A Silenced Shared” which launches on the 21th of May during the evening at the Books Upstairs bookshop in Dublin.
Participating in the evening’s event, in English, sponsored and sustained by the Italian Institute of Culture, will be Irish novelist Sara Baume, writer and translator Brian Robert Moore and moderator Enrica Ferrara.
The book has been translated into English for the first time, and has already received wonderful reviews by critics (the Irish Times called it an “exquisite novel”).
Come to discover this little-known author through this first event dedicated to her after being rediscovered in English.
Moderated by Enrica Maria Ferrara
Sunday, May 21 from 2:00pm to 3.30pm
Books Upstairs
17 D’Olier Street, Dublin
In partnership with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Dublino
A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano
Translated from the Italian by Brian Robert Moore
“An exquisite novel” – Irish Times
Forced back to her remote hometown by the war, Giulia is immediately drawn to a couple in a similar situation: graceful, spontaneous Ada and her husband Paolo, a sickly teacher and partisan in hiding. Joined from Turin by Giulia’s husband Stefano, the two couples form an intense bond; as the Germans begin to occupy Italy, a subtle dance of attractions begins, intensified by their shared isolation and the muffled hum of threat over a long, hard winter.
In prose of subtle, enigmatic atmospheres and acutely precise images, Lalla Romano evokes both the tension and the stillness of life in occupied Italy. Translated into English for the first time, A Silence Shared is a captivating classic novel that inhabits the silent spaces between historic events, depicting the mysterious luminosity of human relationships in extraordinary circumstances.
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 the Second World War 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.
Sara Baume is the author of three novels, the most recent of which, Seven Steeples, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2023 she was named one of Granta magazine’s ‘Best Young British Novelists.’ She is based in West Cork where she also works as a visual artist.
Brian Robert Moore is a literary translator and the current Translator-in-Residence at Tolka. His translations from the Italian include A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano and You, Bleeding Childhood by Michele Mari. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, a Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellowship and, for his translation of A Silence Shared, the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature.