Elena Ferrante

A modern masterpiece from one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante's inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila. Ferrante is the author of three previous works of critically acclaimed fiction: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. With this novel, the first in a trilogy, she proves herself to be one of Italy's great storytellers. She has given her readers a masterfully plotted page-turner, abundant and generous in its narrative details and characterizations, that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new readers to her fiction.

My Brilliant Friend

"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.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, this story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty. Lila and Elena clash, drift apart, reconcile, and clash again, in the process revealing new facets of their friendship.

The Story of the Lost Child

A novel in the bestselling quartet about two very different women and their complex friendship: “Everyone should read anything with Ferrante’s name on it” (The Boston Globe). The follow-up to My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name continues the epic New York Times–bestselling literary quartet that has inspired an HBO series, and returns us to the world of Lila and Elena, who grew up together in post-WWII Naples, Italy. In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and a source of strength in the face of life’s challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, “one of the great novelists of our time” (The New York Times), gives us a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging, a meditation on love and jealousy, freedom and commitment—at once a masterfully plotted page-turner and an intense, generous-hearted family saga. “Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you’ll have some idea of how explosive these works are.” —The Australian “Brilliant . . . captivating and insightful . . . the richness of her storytelling is likely to please fans of Sara Gruen and Silvia Avallone.” —Booklist (starred review)

The Story of a New Name

Ann Goldstein

The Days of Abandonment

A powerful new novel set in a divided Naples by Elena Ferrante, the beloved best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend. Giovanna's pretty face has changed: it's turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Into which mirror must she look to find herself and save herself? She is searching for a new face in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, which professes to be a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves between these two cities, disoriented by the fact that, whether high or low, the city seems to offer no answer and no escape.

The Lying Life of Adults

When her husband Mario leaves her, Olga, left to care for two young children, enters a long period of self-doubt and pity, until she acknowledges the truth about her marriage.

Lost Daughter

When Leda's daughters leave home to be with their father, she decides to take a trip to a small coastal town in Italy, but soon after she arrives memories from her unsettled past come back to haunt her.

The Lost Daughter

"Everyone should read everything with Elena Ferrante's name on it."--The Boston Globe "Ferrante is an oracle among authors, writing literary epics as illuminating as origin myths, explaining us to ourselves."--Claire Luchette, O, The Oprah Magazine Four essays on writing and reading by the internationally bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lying Life of Adults.

On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing

In the Margins

L'amica geniale - Volume secondo «Capii che ero arrivata fin là piena di superbia e mi resi conto che – in buona fede certo, con affetto – avevo fatto tutto quel viaggio soprattutto per mostrarle ciò che lei aveva perso e ciò che io avevo vinto. Lei naturalmente se ne era accorta fin dal momento in cui le ero comparsa davanti e ora stava reagendo spiegandomi di fatto che non avevo vinto niente, che al mondo non c'era alcunché da vincere, che la sua vita era piena di avventure diverse e scriteriate proprio quanto la mia, e che il tempo semplicemente scivolava via senza alcun senso, ed era bello solo vedersi ogni tanto per sentire il suono folle del cervello dell'una echeggiare dentro il suono folle del cervello dell'altra». Ecco Storia del nuovo cognome, secondo romanzo del ciclo dell'Amica geniale. Cominciate a leggere e la scrittura vi catturerà. Ritroverete subito Lila ed Elena, il loro rapporto di amore e odio, l'intreccio inestricabile di dipendenza e volontà di autoaffermazione. Lila ed Elena hanno sedici anni e si sentono entrambe in un vicolo cieco. Lila si è appena sposata ma, nell’assumere il cognome del marito, ha l’impressione di aver perso se stessa. Elena è ormai una studentessa modello ma, proprio durante il matrimonio dell’amica, ha scoperto che non sta bene né nel rione né fuori. Le vicende dell’Amica geniale riprendono a partire da questo punto e ci trascinano nella vitalissima giovinezza delle due ragazze, dentro il ritmo travolgente con cui si tallonano, si perdono, si ritrovano. Il tutto sullo sfondo di una Napoli, di un’Italia che preparano i connotati allarmanti di oggi. Della trama non anticiperemo niente. Storia e forza della scrittura fanno tutt’uno al punto che ci pare sconveniente guastare al lettore il piacere di leggere sorprendendosi a ogni pagina. Meglio dunque abbandonarsi a Lila ed Elena: conoscerle a fondo, riconoscersi sia nella tendenza alla conformità acquiescente sia nella caparbia determinazione a prendere in mano il proprio destino. Dell’Amica geniale hanno detto: «È un libro che trabocca dall’anima come un’eruzione del Vesuvio». (Paolo Mauri – La Repubblica) «Una scrittura densa, sotterranea, odorosa. Che incanta come una danza». (Chicca Gagliardo – Glamour) «È un bellissimo Bildungsroman, anzi due, anzi più di due. Il romanzo di una generazione di amici-nemici». (Paolo Di Stefano – Corriere della Sera) «Una meraviglia senza margini e senza generi». (Valerio Calzolaio – Il Salvagente) «Elena Ferrante se ne sta lì a dimostrare che la letteratura può guarire dai mali del presente, curare lo spirito, fungere da antidoto all’affanno di riconoscersi nella contemporaneità di un Paese sempre più respingente». (Titti Marrone – il Mattino) «Ha il respiro lungo della memoria l’ultimo romanzo di Elena Ferrante». (Anna Maria Crispino – Leggendaria) «Se potessi tornare indietro, non lo leggerei, m’è piaciuto troppo». (Marina Vitale – Letteratu.it) «Un testo che va letto e riletto (ma per farlo ancora più tuo lo si dovrebbe copiare e ricopiare)». (Marina Terragni – Via Dogana) «Un’epopea da non perdere». (Bia Sarasini – Società italiana delle letterate) «Elena e Lila. Ciascuna è per l’altra l’amica geniale: una potenzialità inespressa, un pungolo e un rimpianto, un oggetto dell’invidia e un orizzonte del desiderio». (Beatrice Manetti – L’indice dei libri)

Storia del nuovo cognome

infância, adolescência

A amiga genial

صديقتي المذهلة

Troubling love

tempo di mezzo

Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta

"This is my last column, after a year that has scared and inspired me." With these words, Elena Ferrante, the bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, bid farewell to her year-long collaboration with the Guardian. For a full year she penned short pieces, the subjects of which were suggested by editors at the Guardian, turning the writing process into a kind of prolonged interlocution; the subjects ranged from first love to climate change, from enmity among women to the adaptation of her novels to film and TV. As she said in her final column: "I have written as an author of novels, taking on matters that are important to me and that--if I have the will and the time--I'd like to develop within real narrative mechanisms." Here, then, are the seeds of possible future novels, the ruminations of an internationally beloved author, and the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called "one of the great novelists of our time" (the New York Times). Gathered here in a beautiful gift edition and accompanied by a new, original introduction by the author and Andrea Ucini's intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans.

Incidental Inventions

Following her mother's untimely death, Delia sets off on a breathtaking odyssey through the chaotic, suffocating streets of her native Naples in search of the truth about her family. Reality is buried in the fertile soil of memory, and Delia digs deep to reconcile the past with the mysterious events leading up to her mother's death. Spurred by a series of anonymous telephone calls, Delia reconstructs her mother's final days and with every new discovery must face the possibility that her mother was not at all the person Delia imagined her to be. To learn the truth and to untangle the knot of lies, passions and memories that bind mother and daughter, Delia must return to her roots, to the Naples of her childhood.

Troubling Love

Since the publication of the acclaimed My Brilliant Friend and The Story of A New Name, Elena Ferrante's reputation has grown enormously. Her novels about the friendship between Lila and Elena, about the mysteries of human relationships, are utterly compelling. In Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the two protagonists are now in their thirties. Lila, married at sixteen, has left her husband and the comforts of her marriage, and has now joined the workforce. Elena has left the neighbourhood in Naples, been to university, and published a successful novel, all of which has brought her into a wealthier, more cultured world. Both women are seizing opportunities to flee a life of poverty, ignorance and submission. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by an unbreakable bond.

Elena Ferrante

About

Books

Join the club