"The Days of Abandonment" by: [Italian] Elena Ferrante Publisher: People's Literature Publishing House

Introduction · · · · · ·
★ Elena Ferrante, author of the "Neapolitan Quartet", deconstructs the darkness and lies of marriage

★ Olga's story is the story of a woman's struggle against abandonment, her recovery after her lowest, most broken phase, and how abandonment changed her but did not destroy her. - Elena Ferrante

★ "The Days of Abandonment was written after a lot of painful digging. This book gave me confidence."

★ Renowned director Robert Faenza adapted the film of the same name into "The Days of Abandonment" (2005)

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At the age of 38, Olga suddenly stepped into the hell of life: her husband Mario abandoned her, her young children, and a wolfhound named Otto for a younger woman.

Olga lost not only a 15-year marriage, but also her entire sense of life. She wrote unsent letters to her husband in a vain attempt to understand why her marriage had broken down. She tried to track her husband and his lover, even at the cost of losing her composure in public. She wallowed in the shame of being abandoned, allowing everything around her to fall into chaos: a minor car accident, a sick child, a poisoned dog, and a ridiculous night with a neighbor.

But Olga did not become the "abandoned woman" she had feared since childhood. In her ruthless self-examination and exhilarating writing, she erased the false projections she had long held on her husband and marriage, and finally found herself.

"The Days of Abandonment" (2002) is the second novel by Italian writer Elena Ferrante. It was adapted into a film of the same name by Roberto Faenza in 2005.

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Why did he so easily throw away fifteen years of love, tenderness, and the passionate time we had spent together? Time, time, he had occupied so much of my life, and now he was destroying it so capriciously. What an unfair decision, and a one-sided one. He threw away his past life like it was a nasty bug that had landed on his hand.

Ferrante drives the hammer into her body, inviting the reader to penetrate the page. —Financial Times

What excites us about "The Days of Abandonment" from a literary perspective is that it describes a soul in crisis, almost losing stability and decency, and her heart becomes a battlefield where reason and madness, survival and loss of control conflict with each other. - The New Yorker

Stunning... the author's angry, furious voice is rare. - The New York Times