Author Description

This is a series of linked stories, on the border of fiction and non-fiction, about an Italian village through the course of the twentieth century. Many of the people in the village travelled to America and Australia to work, and some of them returned. Moreno is an original. His writing is distilled, so that it can appear simple, but has great complexity and power. The combination of literary quality and cultural sophistication make it a very Black Inc. book. One story won the Deborah Cass Prize for unpublished authors from a migrant background. The judges - Alice Pung, Christos Tsiolkas and Tony Ayres - noted the "evident quality of the writing, describing it as whimsical without being sentimental, inventive without being precious. The judges agreed that while it seems to take real stories from life, the writing also captures in a humorous, ironical voice something delicate but intangible about loss, nostalgia and home." Another of the pieces, "The Percheron", was the lead piece in Best Australian Essays 2014. Morry comments of what he has read: "It is beautifully and evocatively written, in a completely confident and resolved style. The memory of long-lost detail is amazing, and the photos work a treat."