The Story of the Lost Child – Still Not Fussed

Pamuk and Ferrante on Man Booker International Prize 2016 shortlist

Books April 20, 2016

Aorhan Nobel prizewinner Orhan Pamuk and international (and mysterious) publishing sensation Elena Ferrante are among the six authors in this year’s Man Booker International Prize 2016 shortlist, a selection which, judges said, “Stretch the boundaries not just of our world, but of fiction itself”. For the first time the Prize will be awarded for a single book rather than the previous system which rewarded a body of work. The full shortlist is:

A General Theory of Oblivion (Harvill Secker), José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola), translated by Daniel Hahn (UK)
The Story of the Lost Child (Europa Editions), Elena Ferrante (Italy), Ann Goldstein (USA)
The Vegetarian (Portobello Books), Han Kang (South Korea), Deborah Smith (UK)
A Strangeness in My Mind (Faber & Faber), Orhan Pamuk (Turkey), Ekin Oklap (Turkey)
A Whole Life (Picador), Robert Seethaler (Austria), Charlotte Collins (UK)
The Four Books (Chatto & Windus), Yan Lianke (China), Carlos Rojas (USA).

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Oe, Pamuk and Ferrante headline long list for Man Booker International Prize 2016

Books March 10, 2016

Nobel prize winners Kenzaburo Oe from Japan and Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk along with pseudonymous Italian novelist Elena Ferrante headline the lineup of 13 authors on the Man Booker International Prize 2016 long list announced today. Also included is Yan Lianke’s The Four Novels, which is banned in his native China, and two debut authors, Fiston Mwanza Mujila from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Finland’s Aki Ollikainen.

The award is granted to the finest international book translated into english. The translators receive half the GBP50,000 total prize money. The full long list:

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The Best Books of 2015

Books December 3, 2015

You know it must be December when, like Christmas cards, the Best Books of 2015 lists start appearing reinforcing just how many great books you missed out on during the year. Here are the New York Times’s favourites. The Door by Magda Szabo; A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; Outline…

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Elena Ferrante reveals the before and after of writing her novels

Books June 28, 2015

Elena Ferrante is notoriously private. Despite the staggering international success of what are known as the Neapolitan Novels – My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay – she has never given an interview and never does public appearances. Even her name is a nom de plume. In September, The Story of the Lost Child, the long-awaited fourth in the series, is to be published and this month she talked to The Paris Review, about the art of fiction including how she starts a new book.

FERRANTE: I don’t think anyone really knows how a story takes shape. When it’s done you try to explain how it happened, but every effort, at least in my case, is insufficient. There is a before, made up of fragments of memory, and an after, when the story begins. But before and after, I have to admit, are useful only in answering your question now in an intelligible way.

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