Published in 2020 (first published in 2019)
336 pages
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante is the author of a half dozen novels, including The Lost Daughter (originally published as La figlia oscura, 2006). In 2012, Europa Editions began publication of English translations of Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Novels,” a series about two perceptive and intelligent girls from Naples who try to create lives for themselves within a violent and stultifying culture. Critics have praised her for her “devastating power as a novelist” and for a style that is “pleasingly rigorous and sharply forthright.” Ferrante holds that “books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.” On 10th March 2016, The Story of the Lost Child was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International prize, celebrating the finest in global fiction translated to English.
What is this book about?
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 Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.
Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.
Named one of 2016’s most influential people by TIME Magazine and frequently touted as a future Nobel Prize-winner, Elena Ferrante has become one of the world’s most read and beloved writers. With this new novel about the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Ferrante proves once again that she deserves her many accolades. In The Lying Life of Adults, readers will discover another gripping, highly addictive, and totally unforgettable Neapolitan story.
