Rafaella Sero’s cultural highlights

Raffaella Sero is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her work has appeared in several publications, including The Times Literary Supplement and Cunning Folk Magazine, and she writes the Substack Shakespeare is my Boyfriend. Her plays have been performed in London (including at the King’s Head, Barons Court, and Omnibus Theatre), Cambridge, and at the Edinburgh Fringe. Her current project is a non-fiction book about her literary rambles across the UK.

Memoir: Strangers I Know (2022) by Claudia Durastanti, translated by Elizabeth Harris

Opening with her parents’ mutually exclusive but equally dramatic versions of their first meeting, the epic of Durastanti’s Italian American, deaf-hearing family has the polyphonic quality of a Russian novel. It’s also a true and rare account of growing up in Southern Italy, and of the odyssey that inevitably follows, particularly if you’re a woman and if you want to write. I see parts of myself in almost every line of this compelling confession of estrangement, voicing what it means never to speak the same language as those around you.

https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/strangers-i-know/

Film: La Chimera (2023) directed by Alice Rohrwacher

I was raised in a land of grave robbers and religious festivals, slouching through crumbling houses to the mournful drone of the town brass band; even the light in Rohrwacher’s film is exactly that of my childhood. Set a few hours north and a decade before I was born, La Chimera stars Josh O’Connor as Arthur, an English grave robber with an uncanny ability to locate ancient Etruscan tombs. Woven into Arthur’s escapades is his relationship to Italia, a Brazilian immigrant who teaches him (among other things) to speak with his hands, like real Italians do, in the course of the film’s layered reflection on language and identity. The only issue I have with La Chimera is that the Englishman who eventually repents, while his uncivilised Italian companions keep barking over the marble head of an ancient goddess. But someone must develop a conscience at some point, and I suppose Josh O’Connor has the face for it.

Available on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002t67f/la-chimera

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002t67f/la-chimera

Memoir: Always Home, Always Homesick: A Love Letter to Iceland (2025) by Hannah Kent

Despite its title, Kent’s memoir is more than a reflection on a single country, however keenly observed and lovingly addressed; it’s a love letter to the very act of travelling, of making home in the most alien of places, in the strangest of languages. Tracing her relationship with Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman executed in Iceland in 1830 and the subject of Kent’s 2013 novel Burial Rites, this memoir is above all a romantic history of its writer’s lifelong commitment to storytelling.

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/hannah-kent/always-home-always-homesick/9781035066278

Event: Book Supper Club at Fish Island Books

The notion of a bookshop inside an Italian restaurant would be enough to send me through the roof, even if the restaurant and the bookshop weren’t as good as Fish Island Books and Unlock Pizza. Though small, the bookshop is well worth the visit for its meticulously curated collection of contemporary titles. What makes Fish Island Books really special, however, is its series of events, from aperitivos with the author to the Italian Book Brunch, offering a rare opportunity for readers and writers to bond over a shared love of stories, food, and bookish conversation.

Get tickets for upcoming events: https://www.fishislandbooks.com/

https://www.fishislandbooks.com/

Theatre: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe

On any given day, the yard at Shakespeare’s Globe is my favourite place in the world. All the more so on the evening of an early English spring, when the air is warm and golden-crisp, and I can lift my eyes to a large patch of zephyr sky. A fingernail-sized moon shines within ‘this wooden O’, which echoes with the laughter and cheering of its many-tongued crowd, shouting 2026 replies to Shakespeare’s 1596 questions. What I love about this place is also what I love about Emily Lim’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: the way it embraces its audience, breaking the imaginary barrier of performance, welcoming us into the story. Startlingly tender (though suitably mischievous), Michael Grady-Hall’s Puck is an emblem of this production and of Shakespeare’s ability to hold the world in all its contradictions, sweeping us along in the embrace.

Book tickets, until 29th August 2026: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/a-midsummer-nights-dream/

https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/a-midsummer-nights-dream/

Favourite WritersMosaic writer: Chitra Ramaswami

Ever since reading in nine hours her book, Expecting, about the nine months of pregnancy and a reflection on writing at least as much as on giving birth, I’ve been devouring Chitra Ramaswami’s food reviews, even though I don’t live anywhere near Scotland nor am I planning on visiting soon. That’s how good her writing is.

Raffaella Sero

Raffaella Sero is a writer of fiction and non-fiction.