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18M copies of Elena Ferrante's books sold worldwide Left alone on the beach to fend for herself, a doll named Celina is having a terrible night. The Mean Beach Attendant of Sunset is trying to steal all her words, the Fire wants to burn her, and the Sea refuses to answer her prayers. Worst of all, she has been abandoned by her mamma, the little girl Mati, who now has a new kitten to play with. Between one misadventure and another, night turns to day, and when the sun rises Celina will see everything a little more clearly. The Beach at Night is a short, moving, and mysterious tale for future and present readers of Ferrante's beloved novels. "Classic Elena for beginners and their Ferrante-fevered parents."— The Times
The New York Times–bestseller set in a divided Naples—now a Netflix original series—from the acclaimed author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter. A BEST BOOK OF 2020 The Washington Post·O, The Oprah Magazine·TIME Magazine·NPR·People Magazine·The New York Times Critics·The Guardian·Electric Literature·Financial Times·Times UK·Irish Times·New York Post·Kirkus Reviews·Toronto Star·The Globe and Mail·Harper’s Bazaar·Vogue UK·The Arts Desk Giovanna’s pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittor...
The Story of the Lost Child is the long-awaited fourth volume in the Neapolitan novels (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay). The quartet traces the friendship between Elena and Lila, from their childhood in a poor neighbourhood in Naples, to their thirties, when both women are mothers but each has chosen a different path. Their lives are still inextricably linked, for better or worse, especially when it comes to the drama of a lost child. Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. She is the author of seven novels: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, The Lost Daughter, and the quartet of Neapolitan novels: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Nam...
Leda is a middle-aged divorcée devoted to her work as an English teacher and to her two children. When her daughters leave home to be with their father in Canada, Leda anticipates a period of loneliness and longing. Instead, slightly embarrassed by the sensation, she feels liberated, as if her life has become lighter, easier. She decides to take a holiday by the sea, in a small coastal town in southern Italy. But after a few days of calm and quiet, things begin to take a menacing turn. Leda encounters a family whose brash presence proves unsettling, at times even threatening. When a small, seemingly meaningless, event occurs, Leda is overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family. The seemingly serene tale of a woman's pleasant rediscovery of herself soon becomes the story of a ferocious confrontation with an unsettled past. Following the extraordinary success of The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante's new novel explores the conflicting emotions that tie us to our children. This candid fiction represents her most compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood thus far.
Like few other works of contemporary literature, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels found an audience of passionate and engaged readers around the world. Inspired by Ferrante’s intense depiction of female friendship and women’s intellectual lives, four critics embarked upon a project that was both work and play: to create a series of epistolary readings of the Neapolitan Quartet that also develops new ways of reading and thinking together. In a series of intertwined, original, and daring readings of Ferrante’s work and her fictional world, Sarah Chihaya, Merve Emre, Katherine Hill, and Juno Jill Richards strike a tone at once critical and personal, achieving a way of talking about li...
"Elena Ferrante has established herself as the foremost writer in Italy - and the world." THE SUNDAY TIMES A delightful collection of original essays on reading and writing. From the internationally acclaimed author of My Brilliant Friend, The Lying Life of Adults, and The Lost Daughter, come four revelatory pieces offering rare insight into the author's formation as a writer and life as a reader. Ferrante warns us of the perils of "bad language"—historically alien to the truth of women—and advocates for a collective fusion of female talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of her most beloved authors. A delightful collection of essays exploring reading and writing from the internationally acclaimed author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lying Life of Adults. Ferrante's writing has been described as compulsive ( The Times) and astonishing ( Guardian), her novels have sold millions and been translated into many languages as well as adapted for TV internationally.
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels achieved stunning global success in part because of the mystery surrounding their pseudonymous author. English-speaking readers were tantalized by her enigmatic biography as well as what they took to be her authentic portrayal of working-class Naples. However, we now know that the person behind the writing is most likely Anita Raja, a prominent translator of German literature whose background is very different from Ferrante’s supposed life. In Finding Ferrante, Alessia Ricciardi revisits questions about Ferrante’s identity to show how the problem of authorship is deeply intertwined with the novels’ literary ambition and politics. Going beyond the lo...
"Imagine if Jane Austen got angry & you'll have some idea of how explosive these works are" (John Freeman). Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante has gained admirers among authors—Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few—and criti— James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding success has been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, love, family, and friendship. In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila have become women. Both have attempted pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond.
"Elena Ferrante may be the best contemporary novelist you have never heard of... If the best prose is like glass communicating without calling attention to itself Ms Ferrante's is crystal, and her storytelling both visceral and compelling" --The Economist 'While this trilogy is providing a captivating social history of mid-20th Neapolitan life it is primarily the story of a friendship.' --Lizzy's Literary Life
"Nothing quite like this has ever been published before," proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a sixty-year friendship between the brilliant and bookish Elena and the fiery, rebellious Lila with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The four books in this novel cycle constitute a long, remarkable story, one that Vogue described as "gutsy and compulsively readable," which readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.