Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 235
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – PASSAGE – 3
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST
READING PASSAGE 3
Female fiction
The latest Italian export?
Pseudonymous Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s phenomenal success with her series of novels set in Naples have directed the attention of international publishers towards other great Italian women writers. Her works, beginning with My Best Friend, initially published in Italian, have been translated into multiple languages selling millions of copies all over the world, yet most of the interest in her at home has been in exposing her identity.
In Italy, the domain of literary fiction has been dominated by male writers for a long time and women’s writing has been largely ignored by critics and publishers who have been quick to dismiss it as ‘chick lit’. Often devoid of structure and written in a philosophical style, men’s writings are widely accepted as the standard literature in Italy.
Women’s writings that touch upon gender issues, ambition, and personal longings are generally considered either too sentimental or too domestic. It seems this situation has not always been unique to Italy, British author Virginia Woolf once complained, This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room!
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Daniela Brogi, contemporary literature scholar at the University for Foreigners in Siena, says that female writers are less self-referential than men because they tend not to think of themselves as the centre of the universe. She says, quite rightly, that the literary language developed by women to make themselves better understood is easier to translate than most fiction written by Italian men.
Veronica Raimo, author of the novel The Girl at the Door, comments that in the past she had a reluctance to touch on certain topics in the fear it would be dismissed as stuff for women. Her book, which was translated into English in 2019, is an exploration of marriage, pregnancy and allegations of sexual assault. Stories told by women on these themes do have global appeal, and this is only growing.
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Helena Janeczek has been a novelist for many decades and when she won Italy’s top literary award the Premio Strega in 2018, she was the first woman in fifteen years to do so. In 2018, out of the five nominations three were women – the other two women writers were Sandra Petrignani and Lia Levi. It is interesting to note that only 10 women writers have won the Strega Prize since its launch in 1947. Janeczek’s winning book, an historical novel published in English as The Girl With the Leica, is based on the story of a female photographer killed in 1937 while documenting the Spanish Civil War.
Critics in the Italian establishment have historically disregarded stories about the bonds between women. This has now changed. Three recent highly regarded books analyse mother-daughter relationships. A Girl Returned by Donatella di Pietrantonio is a coming of age story set in the south of Italy and has recently been published in English, Claudia Durastanti’s La Straniera (The Foreign Woman) is about living in a dysfunctional family between Basilicata and Brooklyn.
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Nadia Terranova’s novel Addio Fantasmi (Goodbye Ghosts) tells of a 30-something woman with a difficult past journeying home to see her mother. Both books will soon be published in English. The author of The Girl at the Door, Veronica Raimo, says that because younger readers in Italy have been exposed to foreign female writers in translation, they have become more open to female writers from Italy. They understand that writers like Jennifer Egan or Zadie Smith are a normal occurrence in their own countries.
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A great number of the new wave of female writers attribute this momentum to Ferrante, who has remained anonymous even after her books have become bestsellers. Though her anonymity has turned out to be a public relations dream – speculating on her identity has become a journalistic sport – it wasn’t until she had generated international interest that she was almost begrudgingly accepted by the Italian literati as a writer of serious fiction. And it has had wider effect.
The massive national and international success of Ferrante’s novels has led editors and publishers from all over the world to look at various other talented women writers of the country. Little known author Anat Mostafa, in Italy since her family immigrated from Egypt when she was a child, says she can feel that there has been a shake-up on the Italian literary scene. ‘All those foreign literary agents hunting around for female authors who are unpublished in English has led to the translation of a novel I wrote years ago. I’ve started writing again because the publisher wants more from me. It feels strange when they describe me as an Italian author, I’ve never had that before:
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The demand for Italian writing means international publishers are going back even further. Natalia Ginzburg’s 1963 masterpiece, Family Lexicon, has been revived and published in English for the first time. Three more of her novels have also been republished, two of them in new translations. Elsa Morante, a major writer from Italy’s post-war period whom Ferrante has cited as inspiration, is also getting new exposure with the recent translation of her coming-of-age classic, Arturo’s Island. Whether this foreign interest in Italian female authors will permanently change their status on the Italian literary scene is yet to be seen. But for now it is very encouraging indeed.
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Questions 27-32
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
YES – if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO – if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN – if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27. Elena Ferrante is not the author’s real name.
28. Traditionally, female fiction writing in Italy has been considered as important as men’s.
29. Female writers in Italy have a completely different style to men.
30. Female Italian fiction is easier to convert into other languages than male fiction.
31. Helena Janeczek deserved to win the Premio Strega for The Girl with the Leica.
32. The Italian literary establishment was keen to include Ferrante among Italy’s best writers.
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Questions 33-37
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
33. Books about female relationships
A. have never been written much in Italy.
B. are usually about history.
C. are being viewed in a new way.
D. are no longer considered serious.
34. The writer mentions Jennifer Egan and Zadie Smith because they
A. are upcoming Italian writers.
B. have never received recognition.
C. are the most popular writers in Italy.
D. are examples of successful female writers.
35. How has Ferrante’s being anonymous been useful?
A. She has gained a lot of publicity.
B. People buy her books to try to discover her identity.
C. She can disguise her true gender.
D. She can hide the fact she is a journalist.
36. Anat Mostafa’s book
A. has been a bestseller for 10 years.
B. has recently been translated.
C. was co-written by Elena Ferrante.
D. is about a woman’s life in Egypt.
37. The writer concludes by saying that in Italy
A. female writers need to sell more books to gain recognition.
B. the change in perception of female authors might not endure.
C. it is still difficult for female writers to have their books published.
D. female writers are only able to sell books abroad.
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Questions 38-40
Look at the following people (Questions 38-40) and the opinions below.
Match each person with the correct opinion, A-E.
38. Daniela Brogi
39. Veronica Raimo
40. Anat Mostafa
A. Elena Ferrante is thought to be me.
B. I used to fear writing about some subjects.
C. Elena Ferrante has had a great influence on the way I write.
D. Female readers tend to write less about themselves.
E. The Ferrante effect has helped me.
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ANSWERS ARE BELOW
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ANSWERS
27. YES
28. NO
29. YES
30. YES
31. NOT GIVEN
32. NO
33. C
34. D
35. A
36. B
37. B
38. D
39. B
40. E
IELTS Academic Reading Test