On 18 September 2026 the American critic Anthony Avina interviewed Armand Du Silence. Here is the full interview.
I am Italian, and before being a writer I think of myself as a traveller. I came to writing through travel: I would note down the places, the routes, the stories the past had left behind in them, and at a certain point those notes asked to become a narrative. It was the natural way to give shape to what I had seen and studied. A dog is often my companion: I am convinced there is no better company for understanding what freedom truly means.
The idea of following a single Italian family across a century and a half and five continents. I am fascinated by the way ordinary people are swept up in the great sweep of history: the trade, the colonial wars, the explorations that shaped the modern world. I wanted to begin in an Italian port, Livorno, with a young man who sets sail and leaves everything behind, and from there open a story that reaches New France, Africa, the Indies and the revolutions of Europe. The title itself, “A Mari Usque Ad Mare”, from sea to sea, holds that ambition.
That no voyage is without scars and no choice is without consequences. Behind the “great history” of routes and empires there are always human beings, with their loves, betrayals and guilt: I think of the branches of the family divided by the slave trade or by war. I would like readers to carry away the human cost of progress, and, alongside it, the strength of family bonds tested by time and by history.
A love of travel and of history, together. I believe true history is more gripping than any invention: I chose to set the adventure on solid historical ground, real events and places, from the Lachine massacre to the fall of Quebec, from the Atlantic slave trade to the East India trade. I take great care over the reconstruction, often from notes taken directly on the spot; then I let living, flawed characters move within those events.
I would choose Carlo, the founder, the one who, in the mid-seventeenth century, leaves Italy and faces the Atlantic crossing. I would ask him whether he would do it again, knowing everything that departure would bring to the generations after him: the fortunes and the fractures, the encounters and the losses. I am drawn to the moment when a single choice opens a destiny that a person can no longer govern.
We are a small independent publishing house, and rather than chasing big social-media numbers we have relied on our website and on word of mouth. To be honest, what has helped us become known most are the honest reviews of readers and bloggers like you, more than any platform.
Write about what you truly love, and take the time to know it: go to the places, take notes, check your facts. Patience is worth more than haste. And build each book so that it stands on its own, like a world that holds together: if the first one works, the reader will follow you into the rest.
The saga continues: the fifth volume, “The Sun and the Cross”, is in production, and volumes six through ten are on the way. The story will reach the threshold of 1800: the spice route, the shadows of Europe, the revolutions. It is a single arc, ten novels across five generations, yet each volume remains a complete work in its own right.