A selected list of publications by Antonella Lettieri
Recent Translations
The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre — Foundry Editions, 2025
Outside Vallorgàna, a tiny, isolated village high in the foothills of the Dolomites, the ‘Duke’ lives in the villa of his aristocratic ancestors. The last in the centuries-old line of the Cimamontes, he spends his days on his land, absorbed in the family archive, and tolerated (if gently ridiculed) by the villagers who are his neighbours. When he finds out that the village’s self-proclaimed autocrat is taking timber from his land, he has a decision to make: will he stay in his glorious, cerebral isolation, or will he honour his ancestral blood and take action against this affront?
Matteo Melchiorre’s portrait of the idiosyncratic character of the Duke and the world of Vallorgàna is a sweeping feat of literary imagination. With the pace, panorama, and plot twists of a great nineteenth-century classic, the breathless story of the Duke’s ensuing feud unfolds, asking some big twenty-first-century questions about our relationships with privilege, the past, the natural world, and each other.
All That is Left of Life by Roberta Recchia — Dialogue Books, 2025
The Ansaldo family's contented life is built on routine, with days spent running their beloved delicatessen and summers at their modest house by the sea. But when sixteen-year-old Betta sets off for a beach party and never returns, they are left only with grief – and questions.
The town whispers, the police are lost, and as the family fractures under the weight of their loss, no one suspects the burden Miriam carries. She has answers, but vows to tell no one, even those who loved Betta most. Seeking to bury her heavy secret, Miriam drifts into the orbit of Leo, a young drug dealer, and gains an unlikely set of friends. But when Leo starts to pull loose the threads of Betta's fate, will his search for the truth offer Miriam a way forward or risk unravelling everything?
Your Little Matter by Maria Grazia Calandrone — Foundry Editions, 2024
Rome 1965. Excluded from Italian society, a man and a woman abandon their eight-month-old daughter in the Villa Borghese and take extreme action. In 2021, that child, author Maria Grazia Calandrone, sets out to discover the truth of what took place, examining the places where her mother lived, suffered, worked, and loved.
Your Little Matter is an intimate reconstruction of the life of a parent, a shocking insight into the real lives of marginalised women from the Italian South in the relatively recent past, and the revelation of a cause célèbre that was a catalyst for the legalisation of divorce in Italy. Combining poetic insight with cool, journalistic investigation, and the completely personal with the very public, the book tells a devastating story of how the institutionalised callousness of state and society can lead to tragedy.
Your Little Matter was shortlisted for the 2023 Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize.
My translation was awarded the 2024 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature. An excerpt from the judges’ citation reads: “[Your Little Matter] is a haunting, visceral examination of the failures of Italian society toward young mothers, young families, welfare, and mental health, one which Antonella Lettieri brings into English with the same depths of understanding and compassion that the author shows to her own mother; a translation which is precise, careful, and steeped in the warmth of empathy.”
An excerpt from my translation was also published on Asymptote in 2024.
Excerpts and Shorter Pieces
Lord of the Waters by Giuseppe Zucco, an excerpt published on the Asymptote blog in October 2025
Picture the sky moments before a fierce downpour: dark, oppressive, hanging over your head like a threat. This novel imagines a life suspended in that moment, where the rain never comes. As the external world slows to a standstill, one family’s internal world begins to change. Freed from the obligations of social conventions, work, and school, they quickly descend into a chaotic, easy existence of games, junk food, and neglect, rewriting their familiar dynamics. Beneath their frantic cheerfulness lies a persistent anxiety as they wonder when the accumulated rain will finally fall.
The Ghosts of Munfrà by Piera Ventre, a short story co-translated with Seán McDonagh and published on The Southern Review in July 2025
In this story, sixteen-year-old Stella and her ten-year-old cousin Michele arrive in a small village in Monferrato (affectionately called ‘Munfrà’ by the locals), a hilly region in Piedmont. Natives of Naples and used to the chaotic, lively atmosphere of their hometown, Stella and Michele suddenly find themselves in a very different, remote context, with vast vineyards perched on gently rolling hills and picturesque landscapes of farms, hazelnut trees, and waterways. In the middle of this unspoiled landscape, their aunt and uncle's farmhouse. The house, imbued with stories and ghosts of the past, emanates a palpable atmosphere that lingers as the reader contemplates themes of place and loss.
Offworld by Ornela Vorpsi, an excerpt published on Asymptote in 2024
In this brief but extremely intense novel set in a land that could be Albania, Italy or a magical elsewhere, Ornela Vorpsi explores the intersection of desire and death from the point of view of Tamar, a young woman for whom past, present, and future seem to be happening all at the same time.
Vorpsi’s writing is not only charming but also almost enchanting, reminiscent of a dark fairy tale, especially when she deals with sensuality and death – both themes she obsessively explores throughout her work.
The War of the Murazzi by Enrico Remmert, a short story excerpt published on Comparative Critical Studies in 2024 and Asymptote in 2023
This short story is set in a post-industrial Turin reminiscent of Detroit and explores Italy’s transformation from a monocultural country to a multicultural society, a transition that began in earnest only in the late eighties or early nineties. Like many of the younger generation at that time, the protagonist Manu embraces multiculturalism enthusiastically but is at the same time confused and strangely fascinated by some of the ugliest and most violent consequences of immigration and marginalisation. This theme is explored through a ‘civil war’ fought along the arches on the banks of the river Po (the Murazzi) between the gentrifying forces of capitalist consumerism and the seething rage of those who are pushed out.
My translation won the first prize in the 2023 John Dryden Translation Competition.
Baal by Enrico Remmert, a short story published in The White Review Writing in Translation Anthology in 2024
In this short story, the unnamed narrator – who is on the run because of previous, unspecified troubles – finds a new sense of self and discovers love in a ‘hopeless place’ when he takes up a job in a dodgy breeding kennel and starts labouring relentlessly to turn squalor and desolation into a surprising form of happiness, despite the ever-looming threat of pure evil in the form of the vicious dog Baal. Under the pretence of telling a simple plot of dogs and cons and squalor, this story delves into the most metaphysical question of all – the existence of evil.
Drink Van Houten’s Cocoa by Ornela Vorpsi, a short story published on La Piccioletta Barca in 2024
This short story tells about a young girl visiting her great-grandmother with her cousins and schoolmates. Since the great-grandmother is so old that death itself seems to have forgotten about her, the young girls feel able to pour their young hearts out and confess little secrets about boys and their lives that they think would be impossible to confess elsewhere. However, soon the narrator becomes more interested in her ailing great-grandmother than in the company of her peers.