Paperback: From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime.
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.
Ferrante has created a memorable portrait of two women, but My Brilliant Friend (2012) is also the story of a nation.
Through the lives of Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a neighbourhood, a city, and a country undergoing momentous change.
Elena Ferrante is the author of three previous works of critically acclaimed fiction: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. With this novel, the first in a tetralogy, she proves herself to be one of Italy's great storytellers. She has given her readers a masterfully plotted page-turner, abundant and generous in its narrative details and characterizations, that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new readers to her fiction.
About the author: Elena Ferrante (a pseudonymous Italian novelist) was born in Naples. Though one of Italy's most important and acclaimed contemporary authors, she has successfully shunned public attention and kept her whereabouts and her true identity concealed. In 2012, Europa Editions began publication of English translations of Ferrante's "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. Critics have praised her for her "devastating power as a novelist" and for a style that is "pleasingly rigorous and sharply forthright." Ferrante holds that "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors."
On 10 March 2016, The Story of the Lost Child was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International prize, celebrating the finest in global fiction translated to English.
Rating: 4/5
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