My deep gratitude goes to everyone at Black Inc., especially Chris Feik, who said OK, I want to publish this book, and put up with me, and hammered the book into shape. Thank you to Dion Kagan, Julia Carlomagno, Erin Sandiford and Kate Nash, to Mary Callahan for her beautiful cover design and to Tristan Main for his elegant text design and typesetting.
I am of course grateful to all the people of San Ginese, the real one and the other one, for being there every time I go back, whether in the cemetery or in the houses. It’s time for another visit, if I can find the way there.
Never finally, and always first, my love and gratitude to Anna, Sim and Dan, the most valuable people in my life, without whom nothing is worth doing, for their support and just for being around and keeping me sane.
Moreno Giovannoni was born in San Ginese but grew up in a house on a hill, on a tobacco farm at Buffalo River in north-east Victoria. He is a freelance translator of long standing. His writing has been published in Island, Southerly and The Saturday Age, and his essays ‘The Percheron’ and ‘A Short History of the Italian Language’ were included in The Best Australian Essays in 2014 and 2017. Moreno was the inaugural winner of the Deborah Cass Prize in 2016. The Fireflies of Autumn is his first book.
The Fireflies of Autumn Page 20
