Incidental Inventions

“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 together for the first time and accompanied by an entirely new introduction written by Elena Ferrante and by Andrea Ucini’s intelligent, witty, and beautiful illustrations, this is a must for all Ferrante fans.