Incidental Inventions

Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante is a collection of short essays and reflections — originally written as a weekly column — in which the famously anonymous author of the Neapolitan novels turns her extraordinary intelligence to the objects, situations, and moments of everyday life. These brief pieces are not about great events but about small ones: a piece of clothing, a gesture, a word, a habit. What Ferrante brings to them is her characteristic ability to find in the particular a window onto the universal — to move in a few sentences from a specific detail to a large truth about how women live, how memory works, or how the world looks from the inside of a specific kind of life. Published by Europa Editions with illustrations by Andrea Ucini, this is essential Ferrante for dedicated readers and a perfect introduction for those new to her work.