Lies and Sorcery:

The first unabridged English translation of the electrifying novel of secrets and delusions, from one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century.

Elisa – orphaned as a child, raised by a ‘fallen woman’, fed by fairy tales – has lived in an outlandish imaginary world for years. When her guardian dies, she feels compelled to confront her family’s tortured and dramatic past, weaving the tale of her mother and grandmother through a history of intrigue, treachery, deception and desire. But as her saga of three generations of Sicilian women proceeds, it becomes something else entirely, taking in a whole legacy of oppression and injustice. By turns flamboyant and intense, raging and funny, Lies and Sorcery is a celebration of the female imagination, and the power of storytelling itself.

First published in 1948, Elsa Morante’s debut novel won the Viareggio Prize and earned her the lasting admiration of generations of writers from Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg to Elena Ferrante.

Translated by Jenny McPhee

WINNER OF THE ALTA 2024 ITALIAN PROSE IN TRANSLATION AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN FLORIO PRIZE

LONGLISTED FOR THE OXFORD-WEIDENFELD PRIZE 2024

Review

Thrillingly addictive, magnificent, luxurious . . . as staggering and absorbing as a great 19th-century novel -- Catherine Taylor ― Telegraph

Spellbinding, exquisite . . . Morante creates something truly modern: a novel about the power of stories and storytelling, both seductive and corrupting . . . every bit as exhilarating to read now as it must have been radical to encounter nearly 80 years ago -- Lucy Scholes ― Financial Times

A triumph: a fairy tale of epic proportions and a rightly rediscovered 20th-century classic -- Francesca Peacock ― Spectator

What a thrill that this wild, evocative, compelling novel is at long last fully available in English. Its vivid depictions of how class both imprisons and distorts a person’s sense of self is powerful . . . Lies and Sorcery is a fairy tale with no need for fairies or magic ― New Statesman

I absolutely love this book. Every page is filled with life, and a life, notwithstanding its pain and longing, that reassures, because it’s done with such attentiveness, intelligence and care, and an ability to perceive and receive so much, and then with seeming effortlessness is reproduced on the page. This is why Morante is one of the most talented writers of the 20th century -- Hisham Matar, author of The Return

I loved it and it had been a long time since I had read anything that gave me such life and joy... It was an extraordinary adventure for me to discover, among those chapter titles that felt so nineteenth-century, that the novel was actually describing our own time and place, our own daily existence with lacerating and painful intensity -- Natalia Ginzburg

[In Lies and Sorcery] I discovered that an entirely female story―entirely women’s desires and ideas and feelings―could be compelling and, at the same time, have great literary value -- Elena Ferrante

Each plot development is surrounded by acres of commentary whose richness and intensity ― deep, dense, psychologically penetrating ― provides the story with transformative values, converts melodrama into metaphor ― The New York Times

[Lies and Sorcery] is a work of wild abundance and inexhaustible psychological depth....[it] evokes the passage from a traditional society steeped in the values of collectiveness and belonging to one obsessed with power, with the idea that an individual need only impose their will to have what they want....Elsa Morante’s is, undeniably, a grim vision of the world; yet to read Lies and Sorcery in this heroic new translation by Jenny McPhee, always admirably attentive to the original’s delicate balance between archaism and fluency, is exhilarating throughout -- Tim Parks ― TLS

A social epic tinged with fabulism and written in a sensual and highly ornate prose . . . a writer of conscience, and of brilliance besides -- Bailey Trela ― The Washington Post

About the Author

Elsa Morante (Author)
Elsa Morante was an Italian novelist, poet, and translator. She was born in 1912 in Rome and wrote her debut novel, Lies and Sorcery, while hiding in the countryside during the German occupation of Italy in the Second World War. Alongside Lies and Sorcery, which won the Viareggio Prize, Morante’s novels include Arturo’s Island, which was awarded the Strega Prize, and History: A Novel which became a national bestseller in Italy on publication. She died in 1985.

Jenny McPhee (Translator)
Jenny McPhee is a translator and the author of the novels The Center of Things, No Ordinary Matter, and A Man of No Moon. She is the director of the Center for Applied Liberal Arts at New York University and lives in New York.