Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Award-Winning Audiobooks
Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale!
Shop the sale
Send as gift
Add to Wish List
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Indie Bookshop Appreciation Sale
In celebration of independent bookshops, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks. Don’t miss out—purchases support local bookstores!
Shop the sale
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayIn the Margins
On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing
Narrator
Hillary Huber
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn more
Translator
Ann Goldstein
Length
2 hours 22 minutes
Language
English
Four new and revelatory essays by the author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter
In 2020, Claire Luchette in O, The Oprah Magazine described the beloved Italian novelist Elena Ferrante as “an oracle among authors.” Here, in these four crisp essays, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers. She writes about her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer; she describes the perils of “bad language” and suggests ways in which it has long excluded women’s truth; and she proposes a choral fusion of feminine talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, and many others.
Here is a subtle yet candid book by “one of the great novelists of our time” about adventures in literature, both in and out of the margins.
Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), now a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley. She is also the author of Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019), illustrated by Andrea Ucini; Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016); and a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the “Neapolitan novels” (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published by Europa Editions in English between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018 and is in its third season. Ferrante’s most recent novel is the instant New York Times bestseller, The Lying Life of Adults (Europa, 2020).
Hillary Huber is a Los Angeles–based voice talent with hundreds of commercials and promos under her belt. She records books on a regular basis and has been nominated for several Audie Awards.
Ann Goldstein has translated into English all of Elena Ferrante’s books, including The New York Times bestsellers The Lying Life of Adults and The Story of the Lost Child, which was also shortlisted for the Booker International Prize. She has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. She lives in New York.
Reviews
“Narrator Hillary Huber’s sumptuous voice brings out the poignancy of the four thought-provoking essays…Huber’s performance is a short but lavish listening experience for lovers of letters and literature. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
“The essays of In the Margins are illuminating and beguiling as they peek into the literary craft of a writer at the height of her powers.”
“An intimate self-portrait and an essential read.”
“The collection’s strength comes from Ferrante’s beautiful prose, as well as the fascinating look at where she finds inspiration. The author’s legions of fans are in for a treat.”
“Ferrante offers insights about her complex protagonists.”
“Rather than offering a how-to guide, she describes her process with all the lyrical yet clarifying prose of her fiction…[and] lauds the concept of creativity under constraint.”
“Razor-sharp…A candid look into Ferrante’s development of not only her craft but also her life-long passion for literature.”
“The doyenne of Italian literature pores over her toolbox, discovering that reinvention is the name of her game.”
“Vivid and concise…This book is a true treasure and could provide an important guide for other marginalized writers looking for their own voices.”
Expand reviews