Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year 2021
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.
Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath,in the apartment that my parents,newly married,had bought in Rione Alto,at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri. Everything-the spaces of Naples,the blue light of a very cold February,those words-remained fixed. But I slipped away,and am still slipping away,within these lines that are intended to give me a story,while in fact I am nothing,nothing of my own,nothing that has really begun or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knot,and nobody,not even the one who at this moment is writing,knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering,without redemption.
Publisher: Europa Editions (UK) LtdISBN: 9781787703124Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Modern,urgent,truthful.'-The Telegraph'Elena Ferrante is an expert chronicler of adolescence and its many indignities,as well as its erratic,overwhelming passions.'-The Observer'An astonishing,deeply moving tale of the sorts of wisdom,beauty and knowledge that remain as unruly as the determinedly inharmonious faces of these women.'-The Guardian'Ferrante is a hypnotist.'-The Spectator'The most intense writing about the experiences and interior life of a girl on the cusp of adulthood that I have ever read.'-Financial Times'An incendiary portrait of the volcanic currents of sex and betrayal rumbling away beneath polite society.'-The Mail on Sunday'Compulsive.'―The Times'Layer by layer,piece by piece,with her customary deftness,Ferrante builds up her story,introducing new characters and bits of information,as Giovanna's once safe and sane world becomes ever more slippery. Ferrante has a voice very much her own.'-The TLS
Elena Ferrante
Named as one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in 2016,Italian author Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym of the author behind some of the most powerful and acclaimed novels of recent times. She is best-known for her internationally bestselling Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend,The Story of a New Name,Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay,and The Story of The Lost Child).
Visit the Elena Ferrante author page
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