Incidental Inventions

“Elena Ferrante’s novels have a driving and unconventional narrative power that has gripped readers across a wide cultural range.” – Margaret Drabble * The Guardian *“Elena Ferrante is the literary child of Jane Austen and John Steinbeck.” – Rachel Sylverster * The Times *“Ferrante’s writing seems to say something that hasn’t been said before—it isn’t easy to specify what this is—in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep.” – Joanna Biggs * London Review of Books *

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, The Lost Daughter, and the four novels known as the 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). My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018. Ferrante is also the author of Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night, and a collection of personal essays illustrated by Andrea Ucini entitled Incidental Inventions. The Lost Daughter was made into a feature film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman. Her most recent novel is The Lying Life of Adults. In the Margins, a collection of original essays on reading and writing, was published in 2022. Ann Goldstein is one of the most accomplished translators from the Italian working today. Best known for her translations of Elena Ferrante’s oeuvre, she has also brought to Anglo-Saxon readers novels by Primo Levi, Pierpaolo Pasolini, Alessandro Baricco and other classic and contemporary Italian writers.