Activity

Ferrante: I’m very fond of The Lost Daughter. It cost me a lot to write. A story has to push beyond your very capacity to write it, you have to fear at every line that you won’t make it. The books I’ve published all originated like that, but The Lost Daughter left me feeling the way you do when you…

Ferrante: I have to start from an orderly place; I have to feel safe. But I also know that every book becomes in my eyes worth writing only when the order that has allowed me to begin shatters and the writing flows, and puts me, above all, at risk.

Ferrante: I don’t know what results I’ve achieved as a writer, but I know what I aim for when I write. I don’t care whether the story has been told before: the stories that are presented to readers as new can always be easily reduced to an ancient core. Nor am I interested in revitalizing some over…

Ferrante: I agree with you. A good writer—male or female—can imitate the two sexes with equal effectiveness. But to reduce a story to pure mimesis, to the technical skill with which it represents the experience of the other sex, is wrong. The true heart of every story is its literary truth, and tha…

Ferrante: A story has a time and that time has to have a precise space within which to flow in a linear manner or rise suddenly into the present from the past, bringing with it traditions, ways of using the language, gestures, feelings, the rational and the irrational. Without a space that is drawn…