The Female Beast
Emanuela Canepa
A submissive young woman in difficulty finds her way in the world by turning the tables on a wealthy misogynist.
The Female Beast is an accomplished, mature novel of exemplary sharpness in its structure and linguistic incisiveness. It is the story of an unsettling game of sexless seduction which, while attentive to male psychology, gives voice with stringent analytics to the caustic power of the female psyche.
A misogynist man living alone in an elegant villa grooms a needy young woman to complete an act of revenge for an unreciprocated love he suffered fifty years ago. But she is not as stupid as he thinks.
Unanimously awarded the 30th Calvino Prize
The relationship between human beings (even before that of the sexes) is a complex phenomenon, a delicate mechanism that often depends on forms of manipulation that are in various degrees subtle, conscious and cruel (Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Phantom Thread describes it brilliantly).
Emanuela Canepa is aware of this, and her debut novel recounts the complexity of human relationships with an almost shameless naturalness. In The Female Beast (#l’animalefemina, Einaudi Stile Libero) it is paradoxical that the young protagonist Rosita becomes conscious of both others and herself through a manipulative relationship. Power and weakness serve as seesawing dimensions beyond the absolute. Is perceiving yourself as a victim in itself a form of acquiescence? The question is not only valid for Rosita: it is also true for her elder, misogynist Pygmalion. Which is precisely the source of the novel’s unicity.
Rosella Postorino
Rights sold:
Albania (Botimet Polis)
Greece (Pedio SA)
Macedonia (Sigma Publishing)