A sharply beautiful and moving masterpiece about love and death by the classic Italian author of A Silence Shared

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 four years and final four months of their relationship, built from shard-like moments of connection and revelation.

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 for a great love by a vital Italian writer.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Brian Robert Moore

Lalla Romano (1906-2001) was an Italian novelist, poet, translator and visual artist. Initially more active as a painter, 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. Her novel A Silence Shared, in Brian Robert Moore's translation, is also available from Pushkin Press.

"Romano's best book, a masterpiece: writing that scorches like a blast furnace" - L’Unità

"A master of autofiction before the term existed" - La Repubblica

"Deserves to be read alongside other titans of 20th-century Italian literature such as Natalia Ginzburg, Cesare Pavese and Italo Calvino (all of whom knew and revered her)" - Spectator

"A great Italian writer... Her writing fascinates because so much of it circles around how we construct and remember the lives we lead, those moments and elements that are mysterious and impossible to communicate" - LA Review of Books