Erica Mou Author

Erica Mou (Apulia, 1990) studied Literature, Publishing and Journalism at the University of Bari. She is an Italian singer-songwriter with numerous international awards. Thirsty Sea, winner of the Readers Award of the Lungano Literary Festival 2020, is her debut novel. Erica wrote this book in the kitchen of her rented accommodation in London. Clarissa Botsford is a teacher, editor, literary translator, musician and Humanist celebrant living and working in Rome. About Thirsty Sea, she says: 'I was thrilled to be asked by Héloïse Press to translate their first women-in-translation project, Thirsty Sea. It feels like such a perfect fit, touching on so many aspects of my own work: Erica Mou’s prose is intrinsically musical, her narrator deeply human, with all her flaws, linguistic tics and curiosities, and her talent for turning life’s questions back-to-front as a form of relentless self-accusation. Challenges for the translator are trip-wired into the text, and the author has often given me her own suggestions as to how to dodge her booby traps. She and the publisher have allowed me absolute freedom to adapt the text in order to preserve its intentions. It’s hard to imagine anything better!'