A Celebration of Elena Ferrante, Waterstones

Who is Elena Ferrante?
This is the question on everyone lips. The extraordinary enigma of an author has released the fourth and final volume of her Neapolitan series, The Story of a Lost Child, this September. The series has gripped the nation and become a publishing phenomenon: people are talking about them almost as much as Jeremy Corbyn.

Waterstones' Elena Ferrante Book Club
To celebrate the career of this extraordinary woman, Ferrante's translator Ann Goldstein discusses the writer and her work with novelist Polly Samson and journalist  Rosie Goldsmith.

The Neapolitan Series' Plot
Ferrante's books tell of the underbelly of Naples, from the fifties to the present day. Touching, indeed almost too painful to read at times, the gripping saga of human relationships, tells of two girls, Lila and Elena, who make their way through life from their impoverished beginnings in a divided post war Italy. Elena is the narrator (we assume the novels are autobiographical in origin), driven to set down the history of their friendship following Lila's disappearance in 2006.

Elena Ferrante: Identity & Anonymity
In our time of Instagram, Twitter and Talk Shows, the media-ready author has become a staple of the publishing industry. Yet, Elena Ferrante has written her works, My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and now The Story of The Lost Child, under a pseudonym and with complete anonymity. All that we know is that she is a woman, in her sixties, who lives in Naples. Ferrante has said that "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t"

Last of the Neapolitans
This fourth and final instalment brings this brimming, deeply psychological chronicle to a close. We will miss her writing; descriptions of Naples so vivid you feel as though you're walking its streets. And that friendship; symbiotic yet destructive, and coloured by unfathomable yearning.
Don't miss this fascinating (and free) event. 

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