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Outlandish epic: Lies and Sorcery, by Elsa Morante, reviewed

Spanning three generations of Sicilian women, this family saga of honour, deception and class politics is also a study in morality and the petty ways in which it is eroded

11 January 2025

9:00 AM

11 January 2025

9:00 AM

Lies and Sorcery Elsa Morante, translated by Jenny McPhee

Penguin Classics/NYRB Books, pp.775, 18.99

In 1948, Natalia Ginzburg, then an editor at the Italian publishing house Einaudi, received an 800-page brick of a manuscript from an acquaintance, Elsa Morante. Ginzburg read it in one sitting and declared Morante was going to be ‘the greatest writer of the century’. More recently, Elena Ferrante credited Morante with showing her ‘what literature can be’.

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