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"The Lying Life of Adults" Author: [Italy] Elena Ferrante Douban Bookstore's Most Popular Book in 2021 NO.2
"The Lying Life of Adults" Author: [Italy] Elena Ferrante Douban Bookstore's Most Popular Book in 2021 NO.2
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Description
Introduction · · · · · ·
● NETFLIX is about to launch a TV series based on the novel of the same name
● Ferrante uses a scalpel-like brushstroke to restore the shame, despair, anger and desire of youth
● Only young people who face up to ugliness and shame can gain the strength to face themselves
● The author's works have been translated into 45 languages so far
"The Lying Life of Adults" (2019) is the latest work of Italian writer Elena Ferrante after the "Neapolitan Quartet", focusing on the youth and growth of Giovanna, a girl from a middle-class family in Naples.
Two years before her father left home, twelve-year-old Giovanna accidentally heard her father tell her mother that she was ugly and looked more and more like her sister Victoria, whom he always hated. This sentence drove Giovanna to the lower town of Naples for the first time to face the humble past left behind by her father.
Giovanna witnessed the absurd and tragic love between her aunt Victoria and Enzo in the past, and also formed a strange friendship with Enzo's orphans Tonino, Currado and Giuliana. The vulgar and reckless lower-class community gradually became Giovanna's tool to rebel against the hypocritical life of the middle class in the upper city. She observed and imitated the lies of the adult world with a masochistic passion: her parents' hypocritical marriage, Victoria's vulgar love story, the truth about the bracelet that her father and aunt fought over...
When Giovanna went to church with her aunt, she met the pious and learned Roberto and secretly intervened in the relationship between Giuliana and Roberto. After her ambiguous imagination of Roberto was shattered, Giovanna ended her virginity in a neat and cruel way. On the train to Venice, the sixteen-year-old Giovanna and her best friend promised each other to enter adulthood in a unique way.
About the Author · · · · · ·
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym, and the author's true identity remains a mystery. In 1992, Elena Ferrante published her first novel, "Love Is Troublesome," which was adapted into a film of the same name by Italian director Mario Martone in 1995. Since then, she has published the novel "Days of Abandonment" (2002), the collection of correspondence with publishers "Fragments" (2003), the novel "Daughter of the Dark" (2006), and the children's novel "The Beach at Night" (2007).
From 2011 to 2014, Ferrante published My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave, Those Who Stay, and The Lost Child, one novel a year. These four novels with related plots are called the "Neapolitan Quartet". They describe the friendship between two girls born in a poor community in Naples that lasted for more than half a century in an epic style, and explore the complexity and depth of women's destiny in a sharp and delicate way.
In 2015, Ferrante was named "Woman of the Year" by the Financial Times. In 2016, Time magazine selected Elena Ferrante as one of the "100 Most Influential People". In March 2017, My Brilliant Friend was adapted into a play and performed in London. In 2017, HBO announced that the Neapolitan Quartet would be adapted into a TV series.
About the translator: Chen Ying, a PhD in Italian linguistics, is currently an associate professor at Sichuan International Studies University and the translator of the “Neapolitan Quartet”. His other translations include “The Angry Castle”, “A Man Disappears from the World”, “Persecution”, “Fist”, “Venice is a Fish”, “Shoelaces”, “Miniature World”, etc.
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