My Brilliant Friend

Description

The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not-always-perfect shelter from hardship. A memorable portrait of two women, My Brilliant Friend is also the story of a nation. Through the lives of Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a city and a country undergoing momentous change.

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008) and the four volumes of the Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child), published by Europa Editions between 2012 and 2015. She is also the author of a children's picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night, and a work of non-fiction, Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey. Incidental Inventions, her collected Guardian columns, were published in 2019.

"Nothing quite like it has ever been published before . . . Brilliant novels, exquisitely translated." -- Meghan O'Rourke * The Guardian * "Elena Ferrante has established herself as the foremost writer in Italy-and in the world." * The Sunday Times * "Stunning. An intense, forensic exploration of friendship." * The TLS * "To the uninitiated, Elena Ferrante is best described as Balzac meets The Sopranos and rewrites feminist theory." * The Times * "Ferrante's writing seems to say something that hasn't been said before, in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep." -- Joanna Biggs * LRB * "A modern classic." * The Times * "Ferrante confronts female sexual awakening with such an absence of romantic enchantment it leaves you gasping." * The Daily Mail * "Elena Ferrante is an expert chronicler of adolescence and its many indignities, as well as its erratic, overwhelming passions." * The Observer * "Ferrante is a hypnotist." * The Spectator *