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Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 The Fireflies of Autumn : And Other Tales of San Ginese
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'San Ginese is a village in Tuscany. Many of its inhabitants travelled to Australia and America to work, and some of them returned. The Fireflies of Autumn tells of its rich, sometimes tragic life throughout the course of the twentieth century.
'These linked tales recall the fables of Italo Calvino, the intimacy and sometimes shocking candour of Elena Ferrante, and Colm Toibin's nuanced sense of migration's losses and gains. But ultimately Moreno Giovannoni is an original. In writing that appears simple, but which has great complexity and power, he offers literary style, cultural wisdom and complete immersion in a fully imagined Italian world. This is Tuscany as you have never seen it before.' (Publication Summary)

Notes

  • A selection of interrelated short stories.

  • Dedication:

    For Morena, Ugo and Ichlis

    who were there


    and for Antoni Jach, 

    another fabbro

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Collingwood, Fitzroy - Collingwood area, Melbourne - North, Melbourne, Victoria,: Black Inc. , 2018 .
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      Extent: 256p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 2 July 2018

      ISBN: 9781863959940

Other Formats

  • Dyslexic edition.
  • Large print.
  • Sound recording.

Works about this Work

Moreno Giovanonni, The Fireflies of Autumn: and Other Tales of San Ginese Elizabeth McMahon , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Long Paddock , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018;

— Review of The Fireflies of Autumn : And Other Tales of San Ginese Moreno Giovannoni , 2018 single work novel
'Receiving, reading and reviewing this book is a particular pleasure for Southerly, which published three sections of it as the manuscript was being developed. David Brooks and I independently selected Moreno Giovanonni’s work for respective issues we were editing and were in complete agreement that Giovanonni’s essays and fiction presented a truly original and compelling new voice in Australian literature. So I was unsurprised but thrilled to see that Black Inc had published The Fireflies of Autumn. Nor was I surprised that the book was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2019 and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2018 and listed by Helen Garner as one of her favourite books in 2018. I was more prepared than others for the full volume. And yet, I was not. It is one of the most affecting books I have ever read.' (Introduction)
Found by Trouble Sophia Barnes , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2018;

'The Everlasting Sunday is the first novel from Robert Lukins, a Melbourne writer with a background in journalism, and it’s an entirely distinctive debut: rich with atmosphere, beguiling in its blend of lyricism and quiet menace. Lukins has pointed to a year spent working as a village postman in Shropshire as his inspiration for the rural English setting, here cast in the stark monochrome of an unusually harsh winter. By contrast, the stories collected in Moreno Giovannoni’s Fireflies of Autumn: And Other Tales of San Ginese take place in the hills of Tuscany – a world coloured by turns in scorching sun and unrelenting fog. Giovannoni was born in San Ginese but grew up in rural Victoria, and has worked for many years as a freelance translator. The manuscript of Fireflies of Autumn was the first winner of the Deborah Z. Cass prize for writing by Australian writers from migrant backgrounds. The authors share a lyrical sensibility and a finely-tuned sense of how the fantastical and the mundane, the hopeful and the brutal, are woven together in the stories which define our communities.'  (Publication summary)

Moreno Giovannoni : The Fireflies of Autumn QSS , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 14-20 July 2018;

— Review of The Fireflies of Autumn : And Other Tales of San Ginese Moreno Giovannoni , 2018 single work novel

'How strange it is the way the idyll of life in a Tuscan village can animate a literary mind with tall tales and true of a past that is partly gritty realism and partly a dreamt-up extravaganza of the panorama of life on the Italian land, where every beast is a creature of poignancy as well as poetry, but everything lilts like a fairytale even if the smell of the earth is rich with the reek of manure.' (Introduction)

Telling Tales Chris Saliba (interviewer), 2018 single work interview
— Appears in: Books + Publishing , July vol. 98 no. 2 2018; (p. 25)

'Moreno Giovannoni's The Fireflies of Autumn is a collection of loosely connected short stories, describing life in the Tuscan village of San Ginese. Reviewer Chris Saliba spoke to the author.'  (Introduction)

Moreno Giovannoni : The Fireflies of Autumn QSS , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 14-20 July 2018;

— Review of The Fireflies of Autumn : And Other Tales of San Ginese Moreno Giovannoni , 2018 single work novel

'How strange it is the way the idyll of life in a Tuscan village can animate a literary mind with tall tales and true of a past that is partly gritty realism and partly a dreamt-up extravaganza of the panorama of life on the Italian land, where every beast is a creature of poignancy as well as poetry, but everything lilts like a fairytale even if the smell of the earth is rich with the reek of manure.' (Introduction)

Moreno Giovanonni, The Fireflies of Autumn: and Other Tales of San Ginese Elizabeth McMahon , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Long Paddock , December vol. 78 no. 3 2018;

— Review of The Fireflies of Autumn : And Other Tales of San Ginese Moreno Giovannoni , 2018 single work novel
'Receiving, reading and reviewing this book is a particular pleasure for Southerly, which published three sections of it as the manuscript was being developed. David Brooks and I independently selected Moreno Giovanonni’s work for respective issues we were editing and were in complete agreement that Giovanonni’s essays and fiction presented a truly original and compelling new voice in Australian literature. So I was unsurprised but thrilled to see that Black Inc had published The Fireflies of Autumn. Nor was I surprised that the book was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2019 and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2018 and listed by Helen Garner as one of her favourite books in 2018. I was more prepared than others for the full volume. And yet, I was not. It is one of the most affecting books I have ever read.' (Introduction)
Telling Tales Chris Saliba (interviewer), 2018 single work interview
— Appears in: Books + Publishing , July vol. 98 no. 2 2018; (p. 25)

'Moreno Giovannoni's The Fireflies of Autumn is a collection of loosely connected short stories, describing life in the Tuscan village of San Ginese. Reviewer Chris Saliba spoke to the author.'  (Introduction)

Found by Trouble Sophia Barnes , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2018;

'The Everlasting Sunday is the first novel from Robert Lukins, a Melbourne writer with a background in journalism, and it’s an entirely distinctive debut: rich with atmosphere, beguiling in its blend of lyricism and quiet menace. Lukins has pointed to a year spent working as a village postman in Shropshire as his inspiration for the rural English setting, here cast in the stark monochrome of an unusually harsh winter. By contrast, the stories collected in Moreno Giovannoni’s Fireflies of Autumn: And Other Tales of San Ginese take place in the hills of Tuscany – a world coloured by turns in scorching sun and unrelenting fog. Giovannoni was born in San Ginese but grew up in rural Victoria, and has worked for many years as a freelance translator. The manuscript of Fireflies of Autumn was the first winner of the Deborah Z. Cass prize for writing by Australian writers from migrant backgrounds. The authors share a lyrical sensibility and a finely-tuned sense of how the fantastical and the mundane, the hopeful and the brutal, are woven together in the stories which define our communities.'  (Publication summary)

Awards

Last amended 15 Nov 2021 09:34:38
Subjects:
  • Tuscany,
    c
    Italy,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
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