The author, known as Elena Ferrante, rose to international prominence seemingly overnight. People read her books everywhere, from subways to beaches, and they swiftly captured the hearts and imaginations of readers worldwide.
The "Neapolitan Quartet" series made Ferrante famous. The "Neapolitan Quartet" novels follows a longstanding, tense friendship between two women in postwar Naples, Italy.
The complex love, jealousy, and loyalty between Lenù and Lila was well-received. Ferrante's intimate focus on women's lives in the "Neapolitan Quartet" novels and her previous publications, which many of her generation saw as unworthy, caught critics' attention.
Ferrante has been publishing for more than 30 years, and her 1992 debut established her identity. With the "Neapolitan Quartet," the book spread, especially in the US, where translated literature is a modest portion of popular fiction. Ferrante says she was raised in Naples by a seamstress. She implied she is married and a mother.
Shyness was her initial reason for maintaining anonymity, and she explained to The Paris Review editors in 2015 that she was frightened at the thought of having to come out of her shell. Her reasons for concealing her identity grew creative and philosophical as she published.
Ferrante is quiet but social. She wrote for Italian publications and had a Guardian column for a year. "Frantumaglia," her factual work, features Ferrante's biography and substantial journalist correspondence. In interviews, she has discussed her work, influences, motives, mental state, and, paradoxically, why she stays secret.
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Ferrante and her longtime editor, Sandra Ozzola, get along. Ozzola and Sandro Ferri run Edizioni E/O, which has published Ferrante's work for decades. She is considered Ferrante's gatekeeper. Ozzola declined to comment.
Europa Editions, Ferrante's US publisher, rejected an interview. Michael Reynolds, Europa's editor-in-chief, does not know her and does not want to. He stated in a phone interview that he was completely uninterested and had been from day one. He recalled that no one cared about Ferrante's personal life for 10 years. When curiosity grew, he joked that the media created it. He added that while it was a great story for the media, most readers were more interested in the books.
Even her longstanding English translator, Ann Goldstein, who helped Ferrante become famous, does not know her identity. In nearly 20 years that Goldstein has managed Ferrante's work, they have emailed personally fewer than a handful of times. Most of their correspondence happens through Ozzola. Goldstein added that she had translated many dead authors, so she was used to figuring things out herself.
Since 2015, when an Italian gossip blog remarked that Ferrante's real name is Raja, Edizioni E/O translator and editor Anita Raja has been viewed as a leading contender. The idea went viral when Italian journalist Claudio Gatti alleged in a two-part investigation that Raja was Ferrante in October 2016. Gatti examined Raja's family history, including her mother's Holocaust survivor, and real estate and banking records to reach his findings.
Two experts issued a 2018 study that placed Ferrante's work in the Italian canon. They used language models to analyze 40 contemporary writers' writing samples. They found that Domenico Starnone, previously identified by other investigations as a possible author behind the pen name, is the writer whose novels are most similar to Ferrante's and have become progressively more alike over time.
Despite speculation and investigation, Ferrante's identity is one of literature's best-kept secrets. The suspense surrounding Ferrante's true identity grows with her readership, keeping her story on and off the page captivating and mysterious.
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