Search results for ""author ann goldstein""

A NEW EDITION TO TIE IN WITH THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED FILM DIRECTED BY MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, STARRING OLIVIA COLMAN, DAKOTA JOHNSON AND PAUL MESCAL From the international bestselling author of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND Leda is 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, apparently 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. The Lost Daughter is a compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood, exploring the conflicting emotions that tie us to our children. 18M copies of Elena Ferrante's books sold worldwide

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For fans of Truman Capote and Emmanuel Carrere "Psychogeography at its most perceptive."—Financial Times In March 2016, in an apartment on the outskirts of Rome, two “ordinary” young men brutally tortured and murdered twenty-two-year-old Luca Varani. News of the seemingly inexplicable crime sent shockwaves across Rome and beyond. After the crime comes to light, Lagioia begins investigating the crime by meeting with the victim’s family and corresponding with one of the killers. It soon becomes clear, however, that to investigate this crime means to descend into the darkest corners of Rome and of the human psyche. Lagioia leads us through a maze of betrayed expectations, sexual confusion, economic grievances and identity crises to locate the breaking point, the point after which anything is possible. Sharp, hypnotic, devastating, The City of The Living is not just the story of a crime, but of human nature itself: the tension between responsibility and guilt, between the drive to oppress and the desire to be free, between who we are and who we can become.

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In 1861 French silkworm merchant Hervé Joncour travels to Japan, where he encounters the mysterious Hara Kei. He develops a painful longing for Kei's beautiful concubine - but they cannot touch; they don't even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But the moment he does, Joncour is enslaved.Subtle, tender and surprising, Silk is an evocative tale of erotic possession.

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Does it still make sense to talk about progress? The word “progress” conjures up a positivistic view of the world, a late Victorian boundless trust in humanity’s talents for discovery and invention, and of advancement in any field, whether cultural or otherwise. But what happened after that? Did two World Wars splinter those certainties, causing progress to become separate from the idea of advancement? And can we still, nowadays, after and during an all-encompassing technological revolution, talk about progress? According to Schiavone, the financial crisis of 2008 proved a turning point, the moment when governments and people found themselves forced to act just to defend and keep what had already been achieved. The only possible solution to the ensuing political and cultural deficit is a global response that transcends the particular interest of this or that country. This is being amply demonstrated now, in the midst of the new global emergency that is coronavirus. Completed just before the start of the crisis, and with the addition of a chapter dedicated to it, these pages interrogate the progressive function of technology, not as an alien power but as an integral part of what makes us human.

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OVER 14M OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE “Nothing quite like this has ever been published before.”—The Guardian “This is high stakes, subversive literature.”—The Daily Telegraph “With the publication of her Neapolitan Novels, (Ferrante) has established herself as the foremost writer in Italy—and the world.”—The Sunday Times “An unconditional masterpiece . . . I was totally enthralled.”—Jhumpa Lahiri “An extraordinary epic.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “To the uninitiated, Elena Ferrante is best described as Balzac meets The Sopranos and rewrites feminist theory.”—The Times “Ferrante’s writing seems to say something that hasn’t been said before, in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep.”—London Review of Books “Stunning. An intense, forensic exploration of friendship.”—The Times Literary Supplement Set in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story of the feisty and rebellious Lila and her lifelong friend, the brilliant and bookish Elena. Lila, after separating from her husband, is living with her young son in a new neighbourhood of Naples and working at a local factory. Elena has left Naples, earned a degree from an elite college, and published a novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned and fascinating interlocutors. The era, with its dramatic changes in sexual politics and social costumes, with its seemingly limitless number of new possibilities, is rendered with breathtaking vigour. This third Neapolitan Novel is not only a moving story of friendship but also a searing portrait of a rapidly changing world.

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“[It] will move you across the globe and back in time.” - Library Journal Europa Compass series – new format and covers For the readers of Mary Beard and Bethany Hughes (Re)discover the timeless beauty of ancient literature The classics “never exhaust what they have to say”. Informed by this belief, linguistic expert Piero Boitani invites the reader to explore the wisdom of the works of literature underpinning Western culture, and highlights their profound and sometimes surprising connection to the present. The themes explored in this book are as wide-ranging as they are enduringly relevant. They include the Iliad’s depiction of power and war, as well as its invocation of compassion as one of the necessary foundations of society; the Odyssey as the world’s first novel; Lucretius and the way he transformed Greek scientific thought into sublime poetry; Virgil’s celebration of the history of Rome, from small village to world capital, as well as Tacitus’ denunciation of the imperialistic nature of Roman power; and Ovid’s Metamorphoses—a poem about incessant change the first postmodern classic.

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Voices of Italian America presents a top-rate authoritative study and anthology of the italian-language literature written and published in the United States from the heydays of the Great Migration (1880–1920) to the almost definitive demise of the cultural world of the first generation soon before and after World War II. The volume resurrects the neglected and even forgotten territory of a nationwide “Little Italy” where people wrote, talked, read, and consumed the various forms of entertainment mostly in their native Italian language, in a complex interplay with native dialects and surrounding American English. The anthological sections include excerpts from the ethnically tinged thrillers by Tuscan-born first-comer Bernardino Ciambelli, as well as the first short stories by Italian American women, set in the Gilded Age. The fiction of political activists such as Carlo Tresca coexists with the hardboiled autobiography of Italian American cop Mike Fiaschetti, fighting against the Mafia. Voices of Italian America presents new material by English-speaking classics such as Pietro di Donato and John Fante, and a selection of poetry by a great bilingual voice, the champion of the “masses” and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) poet Arturo Giovannitti, and by a lesserknown, self-taught, satirical versifier, Riccardo Cordiferro/Ironheart. Controversial documents on the difficult interracial relations between Italian Americans and African Americans live side by side with the first poignant chronicles from Ellis Island. This study sheds light on the “fabrication” of a new culture of immigrant origins—pliable, dynamic, constantly shifting and transforming itself—while focusing on stories, genres, rhythms, the “human touch” contributed by literature in its wider sense. Ultimately, through a rich sample of significant texts covering various aspects of the immigrant experience, Voices of Italian America offers the reader a literary history of Italian American culture.

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OVER 5 MILLION COPIES SOLD IN ENGLISH WORLDWIDE OVER 14 MILLION COPIES OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE GUARDIAN 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY From one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood 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 their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not always perfect shelter from hardship. Ferrante has created a memorable portrait of two women, but My Brilliant Friend is also the story of a nation. Through the lives of Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a city and a country undergoing momentous change. “Nothing quite like it has ever been published.”—Guardian “Elena Ferrante has established herself as the foremost writer in Italy—and the world.”—The Sunday Times “This is high stakes, subversive literature.”—The Telegraph

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Alessandro Baricco re-creates the siege of Troy through the voices of 21 Homeric characters. Sacrificing none of Homer's panoramic scope, Baricco forgoes Homer's detachment and admits us to realms of subjective experience his predecessor never explored. From the return of Chryseis to the burial of Hector, we see through human eyes and feel with human hearts the unforgettable events first recounted more than 3,000 years ago events arranged not by the whims of the gods in this instance but by the dictates of human nature.With Andromache, Patroclus, Priam, and the rest, we are privy to the ghastly confusion of battle, the clamour of the princely councils, the intimacies of the bedchamber until finally only a blind poet is left to recount secondhand the awful fall of Ilium.Imbuing the stuff of legend with a startlingly new relevancy and humanity, Baricco gives us The Iliad as we have never known it. His transformative achievement is certain to delight and fascinate all the readers of Homer's indispensable classic.

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Without Blood begins with a shocking, visceral act of violence - the assassination of a man and his family. Only the daughter, Nina, survives, thanks to an extraordinary act of mercy by one of the attackers. Nina is just four years old.Decades later Nina hunts down the last of her family's murderers, the man who was her saviour. Their reunion brings about a profound reappraisal of their lives and what took place on that fateful night over half a century earlier.Highly visual and unforgettably sad, Without Blood is a haunting book about damage, longing, memory and forgiveness. Ann Goldstein's superb translation captures Baricco's effortless prose style and gives readers in Britain the opportunity to experience this gem of a novel that has already delighted hundreds of thousands across Europe.

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Leila is young, beautiful and a hustler. She robs hapless men picked up in the trendy nightclubs of Bologna. Easy money, until she ends up with a document at the centre of a carefully crafted plot of political blackmail. In an atmosphere of intense underworld paranoia she is pursued simultaneously by two secret service operatives, a goon hired by the blackmailer and the police. They are after the document and a suitcase full of dollars meant to be the pay-off. Chased through the streets of Bologna she comes across Francesco, a bus driver and gambling addict who spends most of his time running from the Bear, a terrifying debt collector for the mob. Suitcases and blackmail notes change hands at a frenetic pace against a background of murder and other violence beyond the fringe. A savagely funny crime adventure with an Italian twist.

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_______________ 'A passionate love letter to language and to Italy ... a bold and quirkily engaging self-portrait' - Lee Langley, Spectator 'A writer of uncommon elegance and poise' - New York Times 'A fascinating account of her linguistic exile' - Erica Wagner, Harper’s Bazaar _______________ In Other Words is a revelation. It is at heart a love story of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. Although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterwards, true mastery had always eluded her. Seeking full immersion, she decided to move to Rome with her family, for ‘a trial by fire, a sort of baptism’ into a new language and world. There, she began to read and to write – initially in her journal – solely in Italian. In Other Words, an autobiographical work written in Italian, investigates the process of learning to express oneself in another language, and describes the journey of a writer seeking a new voice. Presented in a dual-language format, this is a wholly original book about exile, linguistic and otherwise, written with an intensity and clarity not seen since Vladimir Nabokov: a startling act of self-reflection and a provocative exploration of belonging and reinvention.

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Without warning or a word of explanation, an unnamed 13-year-old girl is sent away from the family she has always thought of as hers to live with her birth family: a large, chaotic assortment of individuals whom she has never met and who seem anything but welcoming. Thus begins a new life, one of struggle, conflict, especially between the young girl and her mother, and deprivation. But in her relationship with Adriana and Vincenzo, two of her newly acquired siblings, she will find the strength to start again and to build a new and enduring sense of self. Told with an immediacy and a rare expressive intensity that has earned it countless adoring readers and one of Italy’s most prestigious literary prizes, A Girl Returned is a powerful novel rendered with sensitivity and verve by Ann Goldstein, translator of the works of Elena Ferrante. Set against the stark, beautiful landscape of Abruzzo in central Italy, this is a compelling story about mothers and daughters, about responsibility, siblings, and caregiving, pitch-perfect in Ann Goldstein’s English translation.

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The debut novel from the author of My Brilliant Friend in a brand-new edition Following her mother’s untimely death, Delia sets off on a breath-taking 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 phone 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 believed 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 the Naples of her childhood.

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Clash of Civilisations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio tells the story of the immigrant tenants of a building in Rome, who offer skewed accounts of a murder. In this award-winning satire by the Algerian-born Italian author Amara Lakhous, each character takes his or her turn centre-stage, “giving evidence,” recounting his or her story―the dramas of emigration, the daily equivocations of immigration, the fears and misunderstandings of a life spent on society’s margins, abused by mainstream culture’s fears and indifference, preconceptions and insensitivity. What emerges is a touching story that is common to us all, whether we live in Rome, London or in Los Angeles. "The author's real subject is the heave and crush of modern, polyglot Rome, and he renders the jabs of everyday speech with such precision that the novel feels exclaimed rather than written."―THE NEW YORKER

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18M copies of Elena Ferrante's books sold worldwide “Stunning… the raging, torrential voice of the author is something rare.” — The New York Times THE BREAK-OUT NOVEL BY THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF MY BRILLIANT FRIEND Rarely have the foundations upon which our ideas of motherhood and womanhood rest been so candidly questioned. This compelling novel tells the story of one woman’s headlong descent into what she calls an “absence of sense” after being abandoned by her husband. Olga’s “days of abandonment” become a desperate, dangerous freefall into the darkest places of the soul as she roams the empty streets of a city that she has never learned to love. When she finds herself trapped inside the four walls of her apartment in the middle of a summer heat wave, Olga is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal again.“Ferrante puts hammer to flesh and invites her reader to penetrate the page.” — Financial Times“Extraordinary.” — The London Review of Books

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OVER 14M OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE The Story of a New Name, the second book of the Neapolitan Quartet, picks up the story where My Brilliant Friend left off. 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 neighbourhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. 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 is a source of strength in the face of life’s challenges. In the Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.

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For fans of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series comes a captivating family saga focused on a willful young woman’s struggles against her oppressive small town by acclaimed Italian author Rosa Ventrella. In old Bari, everyone knows Maria De Santis as “Malacarne,” the bad seed. Nicknamed for her dark features, volcanic temperament, and resistance to rules, the headstrong girl can only imagine the possibilities that lie outside her poverty-stricken neighborhood. Growing up with her mother, two brothers, and a tyrannical father, Maria must abide. She does—amid the squalid life to which she was born, the cruelties of her small-minded neighbors, and violence in a constant threat of eruption. As she reconciles her need for escape with the allegiance she feels toward her family, Maria has her salvations: her secret friend, Michele, son of a rival family and every bit the outsider she is, and her passion for books, which may someday take her far, far away. In this exquisitely rendered and sensory-rich novel, Rosa Ventrella explores the limits of loyalty, the redeeming power of friendship and love, and the fire in the soul of one woman who was born to break free.

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OVER 14M OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE Nothing quite like this has ever been published before.”—The Guardian “This is high stakes, subversive literature.”—The Daily Telegraph “With the publication of her Neapolitan Novels, (Ferrante) has established herself as the foremost writer in Italy—and the world.”—The Sunday Times “An unconditional masterpiece . . . I was totally enthralled.”—Jhumpa Lahiri “An extraordinary epic.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “To the uninitiated, Elena Ferrante is best described as Balzac meets The Sopranos and rewrites feminist theory.”—The Times “Ferrante’s writing seems to say something that hasn’t been said before, in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep.”—London Review of Books “Stunning. An intense, forensic exploration of friendship.”—The Times Literary Supplement The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women— the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up—a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city’s obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable. 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 lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.

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“AN INCENDIARY PORTRAIT OF THE VOLCANIC CURRENTS OF SEX AND BETRAYAL.”—Mail on Sunday THE INTERNATIONAL No. 1 BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF MY BRILLIANT FRIEND A BBC2 Between The Covers Book Club Pick BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2021 – SHORTLISTED FOR FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR Soon to be a NETFLIX original series 18M OF ELENA FERRANTE'S BOOKS SLOD WORLDWIDE 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? Where must she look to find her true reflection and a life she can claim as her own? Giovanna’s search leads her to 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, a place of excess and vulgarity. Adrift, she vacillates between these two cities, falling into one then climbing back to the other. Set in a divided Naples, The Lying Life of Adults is a singular portrayal of the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER “This is no amiable coming-of-age tale… the most intense writing about the experiences and interior life of a girl on the cusp of adulthood that I have ever read. It is brilliant.”—The Financial Times “An astonishing, deeply moving tale.”—The Guardian “Ferrante confronts female sexual awakening with such an absence of romantic enchantment it leaves you gasping.”—The Daily Mail WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: “Brilliant as always.”—Jan on Amazon “A tightly crafted and gripping story.”—Maxwell on Goodreads “Excellent book. My only complaint was that it ended too soon!”—Mhairi on Amazon “I woke up eagerly looking forward to reading more of this novel every single day.”—Violet on Goodreads “Fans of Elena Ferrante will not be disappointed.”—Lesley on Amazon

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“AN INCENDIARY PORTRAIT OF THE VOLCANIC CURRENTS OF SEX AND BETRAYAL.”—Mail on Sunday THE INTERNATIONAL No. 1 BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF MY BRILLIANT FRIEND A BBC2 Between The Covers Book Club Pick BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2021 – SHORTLISTED FOR FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR Soon to be a NETFLIX original series 18M OF ELENA FERRANTE'S BOOKS SLOD WORLDWIDE 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? Where must she look to find her true reflection and a life she can claim as her own? Giovanna’s search leads her to 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, a place of excess and vulgarity. Adrift, she vacillates between these two cities, falling into one then climbing back to the other. Set in a divided Naples, The Lying Life of Adults is a singular portrayal of the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER “This is no amiable coming-of-age tale… the most intense writing about the experiences and interior life of a girl on the cusp of adulthood that I have ever read. It is brilliant.”—The Financial Times “An astonishing, deeply moving tale.”—The Guardian “Ferrante confronts female sexual awakening with such an absence of romantic enchantment it leaves you gasping.”—The Daily Mail WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: “Brilliant as always.”—Jan on Amazon “A tightly crafted and gripping story.”—Maxwell on Goodreads “Excellent book. My only complaint was that it ended too soon!”—Mhairi on Amazon “I woke up eagerly looking forward to reading more of this novel every single day.”—Violet on Goodreads “Fans of Elena Ferrante will not be disappointed.”—Lesley on Amazon

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These seventeen stories, first published in Italian between 1949 and 1986, demonstrate Levi's extraordinary range, taking the reader from the primal resistance of a captured partisan fighter to a middle-aged chemist experimenting with a new paint that wards off evil, to the lustful thoughts of an older man obsessed with a mysterious woman in a seaside villa. In the title story, Levi demonstrates his unerringly tragic understanding of the fragility of the universe through the tale of a pensive astronomer, terrified by the possibility that a long-dormant star might explode and reduce the entire planet to vapor. This remarkable new collection affirms Italo Calvino's conviction that Levi was "one of the most important and gifted writers of our time."

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A spectacular display of this key European writer's early workThis dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino's unique perspective and narrative gifts. As well as the thirteen tales from his Difficult Loves collection this volume also includes 'Smog', 'A Plunge into Real Estate' and 'The Argentine Ant'.'The quirkiness and grace of the writing, the originality of the imagination at work, the occasional incandescence of vision, and a certain loveable nuttiness make this collection well worth reading' Margaret Atwood'If this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better' Gore Vidal on 'The Argentine Ant'

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A stunning classic set in Italy's most vibrant and turbulent metropolis - Naples - in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. These lively and superbly written stories helped inspire Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. Ortese's work was also championed by Italo Calvino, who was her Italian editor. The stories and reportage collected in this volume form a powerful portrait of ordinary lives, both high and low, family dramas, love affairs, and struggles to pay the rent, set against the crumbling courtyards of the city itself, and the dramatic landscape of Naples Bay. This classic is exquisitely rendered in English by Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee, two of the leading translators working from Italian today. Included in the collection is 'A Pair of Eyeglasses', one of the most widely praised Italian short stories of the last century.

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The extraordinary autobiography of novelist Marina Jarre, tracing her identity and relationships through a turbulent era of European history. 'Beautifully ingenious' Vivian Gornick 'Her masterwork' New York Times 'Rich and lyrical... Jarre's life is fascinating' New Statesman 'Ann Goldstein's shimmering translation of Jarre's prose delivers into English a European masterpiece' Benjamin Taylor 'One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century' Il Libraio In distinctive, lyrical prose Jarre depicts an exceptionally multinational and complicated family: her elusive, handsome father, a Jewish man who perished in the Holocaust; her severe, cultured mother, an Italian Lutheran who translated Russian literature; her sister and Latvian grandparents. Shifting between past and present, Jarre narrates her coming-of-age; first as a linguistic minority in a Baltic nation and then in traumatic exile to Italy after her parents' divorce. There, she lived with her maternal grandparents among a community of French-speaking Waldensian Protestants and experienced the hostility of fascist Italy in the 1930s. Published in Italy in 1987 and now translated into English for the first time, Distant Fathers probes questions of memory, language, womanhood, belonging and estrangement, while asking what a homeland can be for those who have none, or many more than one.

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As the Gospels tell us, after the Last Supper Jesus retreats to a small field just outside the city of Jerusalem: Gethsemane, the olive grove. His prayers are interrupted when Judas arrives with a group of armed men, and kisses him. The kiss, given to point Jesus out to the guards, has become a powerful symbol of the wrenching experience of betrayal, and abandonment. Betrayed by his disciples, even by Peter, the most faithful of them all, Jesus is forsaken. His sin, to have drawn God closer to man. In The Night in Gethsemane, Massimo Recalcati, one of Italy’s highest regarded psychoanalysts, traces the relationship between biblical text and psychoanalytical theory, revealing human life in all its fragility and its agony.

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“AN INCENDIARY PORTRAIT OF THE VOLCANIC CURRENTS OF SEX AND BETRAYAL.”—Mail on Sunday THE INTERNATIONAL No. 1 BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF MY BRILLIANT FRIEND A BBC2 Between The Covers Book Club Pick BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2021 – SHORTLISTED FOR FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR Soon to be a NETFLIX original series 18M OF ELENA FERRANTE'S BOOKS SLOD WORLDWIDE 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? Where must she look to find her true reflection and a life she can claim as her own? Giovanna’s search leads her to 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, a place of excess and vulgarity. Adrift, she vacillates between these two cities, falling into one then climbing back to the other. Set in a divided Naples, The Lying Life of Adults is a singular portrayal of the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER “This is no amiable coming-of-age tale… the most intense writing about the experiences and interior life of a girl on the cusp of adulthood that I have ever read. It is brilliant.”—The Financial Times “An astonishing, deeply moving tale.”—The Guardian “Ferrante confronts female sexual awakening with such an absence of romantic enchantment it leaves you gasping.”—The Daily Mail WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: “Brilliant as always.”—Jan on Amazon “A tightly crafted and gripping story.”—Maxwell on Goodreads “Excellent book. My only complaint was that it ended too soon!”—Mhairi on Amazon “I woke up eagerly looking forward to reading more of this novel every single day.”—Violet on Goodreads “Fans of Elena Ferrante will not be disappointed.”—Lesley on Amazon

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In this little-known classic of Italian literature, young Arturo grows up in near-isolation on the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples. His mother died in childbirth and his wayward father, who left him as a child in the care of a servant on the island, returns only sporadically. Cut off from the island community, Arturo exists almost entirely in solitude: he roams the island with his beloved dog, sails in his boat and reads tales of virtuous heroes and adventurers whom he imagines resemble his father. The boy's world is upended when his father arrives from Naples with his new wife Nunziata, who at sixteen is only a few years older than Arturo. Their presence shatters his childhood idyll, awakening passionate feelings and drawing the family towards painful conflict. Arturo's Island is a moving and dramatic portrayal of the loss of childhood idealism and the inescapable force of desire.

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FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF A GIRL RETURNED, COMES A MOVING NEW NOVEL ABOUT SISTERHOOD, THE PAST AND ITS INDELIBLE MARKS * NATALIE PORTMAN'S BOOK CLUB PICK FOR JULY 2022* *A Strega Prize 2021 finalist * It’s the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth will she deliver? Like a whirlwind, Adriana breaks into her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations. Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister’s youth, their loves and losses, their secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town’s fishermen’s quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and perhaps make peace with the past. Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a novel focussed on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters.

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18M copies of Elena Ferrante's books sold worldwide “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 together for the first time and accompanied by an entirely new introduction written by Elena Ferrante and by Andrea Ucini’s intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans.

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