![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Showing 1 - 25 of 58 matches in All Departments
Named as no.1 in the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times. 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 this has ever been published before,” proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. 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. 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. The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.
Set in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story of the feisty and rebellious Lina and her lifelong friend, the brilliant and bookish Elena. Lina, after separating from her husband, is living with her young son in a new neighborhood 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 vigor. This third Neapolitan Novel is not only a moving story of friendship but also a searing portrait of a rapidly changing world. Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante’s fame as one of today’s most compelling, insightful, and stylish authors has grown. She has gained admirers among authors, artists, and critics. But her most resounding success has undoubtedly been with readers, who have discovered in Ferrante a writer who speaks with great power and beauty of the mysteries of belonging, human relationships, love, family, and friendship.
Acclaimed Italian author Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s best-selling novel
to date, The Brittle Age is a powerful mother and daughter story and a
profound exploration of human fragility and the haunting shadows of the
past
Out running an errand, Valeria Cossati gives in to a sudden impulse - she buys a shiny black notebook. She starts keeping a diary in secret, recording her concerns about her daughter, the constant churn of the domestic routine and her fears that her husband will discover her new habit. With each entry Valeria plunges deeper into her interior life, uncovering profound dissatisfaction and restlessness. As she finds her own voice, the roles that have come to define her-as wife, as mother, as daughter-begin to break apart. Forbidden Notebook is a rediscovered jewel of Italian literature, published here in a new translation by the celebrated Ann Goldstein and with a foreword by Jhumpa Lahiri. A captivating feminist classic, it is an intimate, haunting story of domestic discontent in postwar Rome, and of one woman's awakening to her true thoughts and desires.
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.
A moving Italian coming-of-age classic in a new translation by Ann Goldstein, celebrated translator of Elena Ferrante On a remote island in the Bay of Naples, a young boy roams the shore with only his dog for company. Arturo's mother died in childbirth and his wayward father Wilhelm rarely returns to the island. Left in isolation, he dreams up a world of romantic exploits in which his father sails the seas like the heroes in his favourite stories. When Wilhelm suddenly reappears with his new young wife Nunziata, Arturo's imagined world bursts apart, and he falls in passionate, tormented love. As Wilhelm's behaviour grows increasingly erratic, Arturo must begin to face the reality of his father's life, and of his own feelings. A deeply affecting tale of childhood disenchantment, Arturo's Island is a work of stunning emotional force by one of modern Italian literature's foremost writers.
_______________ '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.
"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
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.
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.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2016 AND THE US 2016 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD The fourth and final book of the internationally renowned and bestselling Neapolitan novels. One of the major publishing events of 2015, this dazzling saga of two women - the brilliant Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila - firmly establishes the Neapolitan Quartet as perhaps the most significant work to date of the 21st century. Life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses suffered. But, throughout it all, their friendship remains the gravitational centre of their lives. The unmissable finale to a great literary achievement.
A Romeo & Juliet tale for Hamilton! fans. In post-American Revolution New York City, Theodosia Burr, a scholar with the skills of a socialite, is all about charming the right people on behalf of her father—Senator Aaron Burr, who is determined to win the office of president in the pivotal election of 1800. Meanwhile, Philip Hamilton, the rakish son of Alexander Hamilton, is all about being charming on behalf of his libido.   When the two first meet, it seems the ongoing feud between their politically opposed fathers may be hereditary. But soon, Theodosia and Philip must choose between love and family, desire and loyalty, and preserving the legacy their flawed fathers fought for or creating their own.   Love, Theodosia is a smart, funny, swoony take on a fiercely intelligent woman with feminist ideas ahead of her time who has long-deserved center stage. A refreshing spin on the Hamiltonian era and the characters we have grown to know and love. It’s also a heartbreaking romance of two star-crossed lovers, an achingly bittersweet “what if.” Despite their fathers’ bitter rivalry, Theodosia and Philip are drawn to each other and, in what unrolls like a Jane Austen novel of manners, we find ourselves entangled in the world of Hamilton and Burr once again as these heirs of famous enemies are driven together despite every reason not to be.
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.
Following her mother's untimely and mysterious death, Delia embarks on a voyage of discovery through the streets of her native Naples, searching for the truth about her family. A series of mysterious telephone calls leads to a compelling and disturbing revelation about her mother's final days. A stylish work of fiction set in a beguiling but often hostile Naples, whose chaotic, suffocating streets become one of the book's central motifs.
Elena Ferrante is the best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend, now an HBO original series. Collected here for the first time are the seeds of future novels, the timely reflections of this internationally beloved storyteller, the abiding preoccupations of a writer who has been called "one of the great novelists of our time" (New York Times). "This is my last column, after a year that has scared and inspired me . . . 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." With these words, Elena Ferrante bid farewell to her year-long collaboration with the Guardian newspaper. For a full year, she wrote weekly articles, the subjects of which had been suggested by Guardian editors, making the writing process a sort of prolonged interlocution. The subjects ranged from first love to climate change, from enmity among women to the experience of seeing her novels adapted for film and TV. Translated by Ann Goldstein, the acclaimed translator of Ferrante's novels, and accompanied by Andrea Ucini's intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this volume is a must for all curious readers.
In 1861 French silkworm merchant Herve 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. |
![]() ![]() You may like...
Biophilic Connections and Environmental…
Richard Coles, Sandra Costa
Paperback
R1,204
Discovery Miles 12 040
|