The author of acclaimed novels that have been translated into many languages, Nadia Terranova is one of the most prominent voices of contemporary Italian literature. In 2020, her first novel translated into English, Farewell Ghosts, was published by Seven Stories Press and was translated by Ann Goldstein (the noted translator of Elena Ferrante). A critical success in Italy, the novel was awarded the Premio Alassio Centolibri and named a finalist for the Premio Strega.
Her second and latest novel to be published in English, The Night Trembles, came out in 2025 from Seven Stories Press and also was translated by Goldstein. Last fall, I met Terranova, interviewing her about her book as part of a Litquake event held at the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco.
Terranova’s novels possess a quality that belongs to great literature: the ability to explore the complexities of the human experience by weaving together history and storytelling, documentary and imagination, the tangible and the intangible — in a stunning lyrical prose.
In The Night Trembles, the narrative is set during the 1908 Messina Strait earthquake, the most devastating in Europe until then. It destroyed Messina and Reggio Calabria, the two cities facing each other on a submarine fault, eradicating the region’s identity as it was known at the time.
Terranova was herself born in Messina, so we began our conversation at the Italian Cultural Institute with a question on the legacy and memory of the event across generations.
The following is an excerpt from that live conversation, edited for clarity. The conversation with Terranova was conducted in Italian and translated by the interviewer.
Sara Marinelli: “The people of Messina no longer exist” was the categorical statement in the aftermath of the earthquake. What social and familial legacy did it leave on your identity?
Nadia Terranova: As someone born in Messina, with many generations of ancestry there, I drew from this destructive event in my origins and transformed it into what I know how to create: a story. All my books explore roots in a genealogical sense, but roots extend beyond just family. A place is also a root. As I looked back at the history of my hometown, it became inevitable that I would have to confront this deep wound.
SM: The Night Trembles can be considered a historical novel for its detailed documentation of people’s lives in a conjunctural time. The story follows two main characters: Barbara and Nicola. Barbara is a twenty-year-old girl living near Messina who is destined for an arranged marriage despite her desire to attend university—a privilege forbidden to women at the time. Nicola is an eleven-year-old boy living with a distant father and a fanatically religious mother in Reggio Calabria. To prevent the devil from taking her son away, she ties him to his bed every night in the basement. What inspired you to create Barbara and Nicola, two characters who clearly lack agency?
NT: They are fictional characters caught in a historical event that risks fading from memory, which also serves as a metaphor for broader themes. The narrative explores the effects of political and economic power on the lives of non-powerful, ordinary individuals. While writing, I realized that simply telling the stories of ordinary people wasn’t enough. I wanted to uncover the voices that were not recorded in the earthquake accounts, which mainly reflected a single perspective: that of adult males. The absence of substantial narratives from women and children suggested that their experiences during the catastrophe were either unrecognized or excluded from the public narrative.
Barbara’s story was inspired by a description I read in a newspaper: When rescuers arrived in Messina, the girls threw themselves at them, half-naked. I read it many times because it seemed very unlikely. Then I realized that it was a preemptive act of defense [by the rescuers] against potential allegations of sexual assault.
The character of Nicola emerged from my questioning the stereotypical narratives surrounding child survivors, which only focused on their anguish over losing their families. But what if there was an unhappy child whose home felt like a prison? What if, for them, destruction was a form of liberation?
Both characters had no choice about their lives before the catastrophe. This additional misfortune that befalls them ultimately presents an opportunity to break free from the constraints imposed by their families and invent a different life.
SM: Catastrophic events compel us to reflect on the relationship between the individual and the community. The opportunities that Barbara and Nicola overcome after experiencing violence and alienation depend not only on their resilience but also on the support they receive from others and the reciprocal nature of that support. Initially, Barbara finds shelter with a group of nuns and later helps establish a new community with other women. Nicola, who first isolates himself out of distrust, then joins a community of orphans that helps him find a new family in northern Italy. In many ways, the novel is also a reflection on the measure of our humanity during times of crisis.
NT: Yes—the pain of losing everything can divide as well as unite. Solidarity is not always innate; those who suffer such a profound shock often act out of fear and may be capable of anything. In Messina and Reggio Calabria in December 1908, there were many instances of opportunistic behavior and looting from the few houses left standing. Everyone fought to survive. In fact, many who initially made it [past the earthquake itself] later succumbed to poisonous gases or injuries, such as head traumas that took time to prove fatal, and were “dead men walking” without realizing it.
However, after the initial chaos, during which Barbara and Nicola faced violence and hostility while having to defend themselves, everyone came together with the common goal of long-term survival. They understood they still had a life ahead of them, which would be far different from their previous existence. With everything and everyone they once knew gone, it became more likely that people would weave new networks.
SM: The novel also ushers us deep into the relationship with the arcane and the invisible. In Italian culture, when we cannot reconcile with a tragic event, we turn to religion and superstition, relying on vows, omens, and premonitions. A memorable character in the story is Madame, a clairvoyant who reads tarot cards and can sense the living trapped beneath the rubble. The tarot cards serve as the narrative framework for the novel, with each chapter opening with a specific card. What considerations went into conceiving the tarot framework?
NT: Madame is a character that allowed me to access a symbolic realm that was both religious and superstitious, which aligned with what I had read in various witness testimonies. I came across accounts of incidents such as children being found alive under the rubble ten days after the quake, thanks to psychics who directed rescuers on where to dig. Also, a body of literature emerged around the omens and presages that had foretold the disaster. One story tells of a mother who, outraged by her son’s arrest, storms into the courthouse during the trial and says, “There will be an earthquake that will destroy you all, but it will have eyes.” The reference to the earthquake’s “eyes” implies that it would distinguish between those to spare and those to punish.
The twenty-two tarot cards delineate the entire human journey; they include births, deaths, and rebirths, as well as spiritual and material realms. When I began writing this book, I immediately associated Barbara with the card of The Moon, which symbolizes a feminine energy struggling to rise above the dark waters of emotions but ultimately succeeding. Nicola is The Hangman: He is tied up, yet only partially, suggesting he will eventually free himself. The Tower represents destruction and the collapse of structures, while The Wheel of Fortune shuffles destinies and possibilities. I initially connected these four cards to the first chapters without expecting them to shape the entire book’s structure; then I realized I enjoyed the game and kept playing it.
SM: The novel’s epigraph is a quote from the poet Giovanni Pascoli, who had lived in Messina but left the city in 1906. “Here where history is almost destroyed, poetry remains.” How can we create poetry in the midst of and after destruction?
NT: When I read Pascoli’s comment on the earthquake, I thought that when we lose everything, the only thing we have left is to tell what happened. Words can build something new. There is a common misconception that poetry and literature are only for the privileged and educated; in reality, poetry may be the last resort for the desperate, as in this case.
SM: Yes — years later, Barbara recounts her story. I saw poetry and beauty in the resilience of the female characters, particularly when, during the reconstruction, the small group of women Barbara survives with expands to form a community. Without the interference of patronizing husbands and fathers, they learn new trades in the earthquake shacks, establish a school, and build unconventional family structures at the turn of the 20th century. Of a baby about to be born, Barbara remarks, “It will be a girl, even if it’s a boy.” It’s a feminist ferment in the 1908 Kingdom of Italy.
NT: I relate to that. While writing about the female community surrounding Barbara, I thought of the times when men went off to war, leaving women to care for the children. The women supported one another and, in a sense, became each other’s wives. Here, I imagined how these young girls, who had been completely powerless before the catastrophe—having little choice about whom to love, whom to marry, or whether they could pursue an education—finally felt strong. Suddenly, they were able to make decisions for themselves and collectively lead the reconstruction phase.
That sentence you quoted flips the traditional notion that a baby boy is synonymous with strength and power in that cultural context. It suggests that a boy can be “strong like a woman” because they have now witnessed what a woman can do.
Sara Marinelli is an Italian writer living in San Francisco. Her essays in English appear in Chicago Quarterly Review, Blue Mesa Review, New American Writing, and Pummarol; her work in Italian is published in Nazione Indiana, Leggendaria, and Il Manifesto. She holds a PhD in Anglo-American Literature from the University of Rome and an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. A recent Brown-Handler Fellow, she teaches at the University of San Francisco and the San Francisco Opera, and is the co-curator of the first Italian Literary Festival in San Francisco.