Incidental Inventions

By: Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein (Translator), Andrea Ucini (Illustrator)

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Hardcover | 19 November 2019

At a Glance

Hardcover
120 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.88 x 1.91

Hardcover

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'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 here in a beautiful gift edition and accompanied by a new, original introduction by the author and Andrea Ucini’s intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans.

About the Author

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), and the international bestselling novel in four installments known as The Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, The Story of the Lost Daughter, Europa 2012-2015). She is also the author of Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey, and a children's picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night.

Industry Reviews

Praise for Incidental Inventions

"Both timely and deeply personal...this varied assembly of considerations is a portrait of an acclaimed storyteller's bold and singular voice."--Columbia Journal

"In prose that provokes and transforms, evoking wonder and tension in the most gratifying sense, these fragments of Ferrante ultimately cohere into a full, absorbing portrait of an enduring author."--Library Journal

"As with her fiction, Ferrante's voice here is clear, eloquent and powerful."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"This essay collection is subtle. Ferrante's writing is akin to a whisper from one friend to another: It utters the truth one would rather not hear, but says it compactly and devastatingly."--Harvard Crimson

"Wide-ranging and curious, often 'charged with feeling' and always underscored by a sharp and careful intellect...Incidental Inventions is very much a masterclass in style."--The Saturday Paper

"If you are interested in the experience of having a drink with the author and listening to her muse on various subjects...here's your answer."--Vulture

"You'll never want to put this book down."--Better Reading

"Incidental Inventions is a more coherent and cohesive mapping of the writer's inner world and quotidian life--her desires, fears, ambitions, failures. Ferrante peeks, as it were, from behind the curtains-pages pictured on the book cover, revealing a sliver of herself."--Reading in Translation

"There are spontaneous splashes of colour, highly concentrated phrases and much rich, aphoristic profundity. Reading Ferrante reminds me of the wonderful tradition of European essayism lying behind high journalism."--Canberra Times

Praise for Elena Ferrante

"Ferrante can talk about politics, history, philosophy, sexuality, loneliness, and I willingly go with her, without ever questioning it. I don't know any [other] writer who can do that."--Beth Nguyen, San Francisco Chronicle

"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, The London Review of Books

"Ferrante, in her unflinching willingness to lead us toward 'the mutable fury of things' places the readers inside intimate relations between with an irresistible and urgent immediacy."--Roger Cohen, The New York Review of Books

"Reading Ferrante is an extraordinary experience. There's a powerful and unsettling candor in her writing."--Nick Romeo, The Boston Globe

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