Where should you start with Elena Ferrante?

Elena Ferrante is the pen name of an Italian novelist who has kept her identity private since her first novel appeared in 1992. She writes in Italian; in English, most readers know her through Ann Goldstein's translations, published by Europa Editions. She is one of the most widely read Italian writers of the century so far, and there is a clear front door to her work.

The front door: My Brilliant Friend

The first Neapolitan Novel, L'amica geniale, was published in Italy in 2011 and in English in 2012. It begins in the 1950s in a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples, where two girls, Elena, the bookish narrator, and Lila, fierce and brilliant, meet at the age of ten. The novel follows them through school and adolescence, and their friendship, part devotion and part competition, drives everything. In 2024 The New York Times Book Review ranked it the best book of the twenty-first century so far, which is a lot of pressure for one paperback, but it holds up.

The quartet continues, in this order:

• The Story of a New Name (2012 in Italian)
• Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2013)
• The Story of the Lost Child (2014), shortlisted for the International Booker Prize

Together the four books follow the two women across almost sixty years. Read them in order: they are one long story split into volumes, not four separate novels.

A practical warning

The first volume is busy setting up a whole neighbourhood, so give it a fair run. If you are a hundred pages in and unsure, keep going a little longer before you decide. If you are two hundred pages in and still unmoved, give yourself permission to stop; Ferrante is not for everyone.

Shorter ways in

If four volumes feel like a commitment, Ferrante's earlier novels stand alone:

• Troubling Love (1992), her debut.
• The Days of Abandonment (2002), filmed in Italy in 2005.
• The Lost Daughter (2006), filmed in 2021 by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Later came The Lying Life of Adults (2019), adapted as a Netflix series. And if you want to hear her thinking about writing, Frantumaglia (2003) collects her letters and essays.

A reading plan

If you like a plan, here is ours. Read My Brilliant Friend on its own and pause. If you want more, buy the other three volumes together, because you will not want to wait between them. Take a break afterwards with something completely different, then try The Days of Abandonment to meet her in a single, standalone novel. Save Frantumaglia for last, when you are curious about how she thinks rather than what happens next.

About the anonymity

Ferrante has explained that she believes books, once written, do not need their authors in public. Readers and journalists have speculated about her identity for years, and the attempts to unmask her have themselves been widely criticised. For readers, the practical effect is refreshing: there is no author photo, no persona and no publicity tour, just the books. We suggest leaving it that way.