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Reading Elena Ferrante’s novel The Lost Daughter for the first time, Maggie Gyllenhaal, who would go on to adapt and direct it in a critically acclaimed, Oscar nominated film, said that Ferrante “was saying things out loud that I knew to be true, but I had never heard said out loud. And I found that both disturbing and comforting, and I thought, in...

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My Brilliant Friend is coming to an end at HBO. But not quite yet. The WarnerMedia-owned cable network and Italian public broadcaster Rai have renewed the series, which is based on Elena Ferrante’s book series, for a fourth and final season. It comes as the third season, My Brilliant Friend: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, launched in the U.S....

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Friday April 8, 2022 — 7 p.m. EST. I AM Books, 124 Salem Street, Boston MA (Register Here). Join I AM Books for a conversation between Elena Ferrante’s translator Ann Goldstein and Europa Editions Editor-in-Chief Michael Reynolds. The series “Libriamo! From Italy with Books” is presented by I AM Books in collaboration with FICC Boston and is under...

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Elena Ferrante, the doyenne of Italian literature, is renowned for her bestselling Neapolitan quartet and The Lost Daughter, adapted by Maggie Gyllenhaal into an acclaimed film starring Olivia Colman. (Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, including My Brilliant Friend, have sold 4 million copies in North America and over 8 million globally.) With In the...

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When last we left Elena “Lenù” Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo at the end of My Brilliant Friend’s second season, these two young ladies—friends since their 1950s girlhood in a rough Naples neighborhood—were headed in such different directions that it seemed they might never meet again. Lila (Gaia Girace), arguably the smarter of the two, had bu...

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As a movie, The Lost Daughter has the satisfyingly melancholy feel of a rained-out vacation in a dream destination. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut is a prickly examination of ambivalence towards motherhood, with an emotional heft that belies its coastal Italian setting. More than picturesque set dressing, the locale is a nod to the source ma...

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In an earlier period, Western medieval literary texts were anonymous. Stories and tales were not meant to have an author; they would circulate anonymously. Even centuries later, several writers had their books published under a pen name or still anonymously. For instance, the founder of the historical novel genre, Sir Walter Scott, wrote Waverley (...

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Elena Ferrante has been awarded the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. The literary award to the mysterious writer of the saga of the "Amica geniale" was presented this morning during a special event of the Cheltenham Literary Festival, one of the most important literary festivals in the United Kingdom, which took place in the Town Hall of...

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Netflix is moving forward with its Elena Ferrante series adaptation, “The Lying Life of Adults,” which will start shooting in Naples in October with Neapolitan helmer Edoardo De Angelis (“Indivisible”) directing and Valeria Golino playing a prominent role. “Lying Life of Adults” leads a slate of Netflix Italian original series projects — several of...

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Maggie Gyllenhaal may come from a family of filmmakers, yet she never let herself dream about directing until recently. Things changed very quickly and very profoundly for Gyllenhaal when she found herself writing to Elena Ferrante, asking for permission to adapt her 2008 novel “The Lost Daughter.” Ferrante said yes, she could have the rights, but...

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