Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante is an Italian novelist whose true identity is not publicly known. Despite being very famous in North America, she has kept her identity secret since the publication of her first novel in 1992.

Career

Ferrante is the author of a half dozen novels, the best known of which is Days of Abandonment (I giorni dell'abbandono). Her "Neapolitan Novels", a series about two perceptive and intelligent girls from Naples who try to create lives for themselves within a violent and stultifying culture, consist of My Brilliant Friend,The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child, which was nominated for the Strega Prize, an Italian literary award.

Two of Ferrante's novels have been turned into films. Troubling Love (L'amore molesto) became the feature film Nasty Love directed by Mario Martone, while The Days of Abandonment became a film of the same title directed by Roberto Faenza. In her nonfiction book Fragments (La frantumaglia 2003), Ferrante speaks of her experiences as a writer.