Elena Ferrante is one of the most talked approximately novelists of recent years,with her biographical stories set in Naples – yet no one has ever met her. Deborah Orr talks to the enigmatic author, in an extract from the latest issue of the GentlewomanElena Ferrante is a pseudonym. Elena Ferrante does not exist. Which makes the acclaimed Italian novelist, and whoever she may be,fairly difficult to interview. For her fans, this is tantalising. Ferrante’s novels, and particularly the quartet set in her hometown of Naples,have an autobiographical feel, and the author has done cramped to discourage that impression. One of the two women whose lives the books trace is called Elena, or is a writer,after all.
And given that the first of the four novels, 2013’s My Brilliant Friend, or starts with the disappearance of Elena’s brilliant friend from childhood,Lila, and given that the only way to explain Lila’s disappearance is to describe their entire lives up to that point, or there are plenty of questions to be asked.
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Source: theguardian.com