Neapolitan Chronicles

Quotes

“The stories collected in this volume, which reverberate with Chekhovian energy and melancholy, are revered in Italy by writers and readers alike. Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee reward us with a fresh and scrupulous translation.” Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

“This collection of writing and reportage about Naples was a major inspiration for Elena Ferrante. Ortese’s portrait of the Italian city just after World War II is of a place of poverty and desperation.” New York Times Book Review

“Today, few critics would disagree with the poet Andrea Zanzotto, who rates [Ortese] as ‘one of the most important Italian women writers of this century.’" Independent (London)

“An astonishing descent into the underworld…A modern artist has rarely rendered so intensely the spectrality of all things.” La Repubblica (Rome)

“In stories and essays, Ortese describes both the Neapolitan poor and the bourgeois in granular detail…Required reading for Ferrante fans and scholars of Neapolitan literature.” Kirkus Reviews

“Ortese portrays the human dimension of the city’s poverty through short stories…Ortese’s articles and stories serve as a provocative showcase of how a city once associated with ‘ecstatic happiness…deteriorated into vice and folly.’" Publishers Weekly

“This remarkable city portrait, both phantasmagorical and harshly realistic, conveys Naples in all its shabbiness and splendor.” Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront

Awards

• New York Times Pick