Prosciutto, Symbol of Abundance Amidst Poverty

Elena Ferrante’s series of four Neapolitan novels have been reviewed with great admiration since the first was published in 2012. Finally, I’ve begun reading them, and have now finished the first two, My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name.
  
I’m enjoying this wonderful author and her writing, and I hope to post more about the books when I have read all four of them. For now, I want to describe how the author uses an ordinary food item, prosciutto, as a way to offer insights about the two main characters of the books: Elena Greco, the narrator, called Lenuccia or Lenù and her lifelong friend Raffaella Cerullo, called Lina, or Lila.

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Pseudonyms, puzzles and privacy

Two weeks ago, yet another attempt was made to pin down Elena Ferrante, an Italian author known as much for her pseudonym as she is for her writing. This time, the detective was Marco Santagata, a professor at the University of Pisa. After studying Ferrante’s The Story of a New Name, Santagata combed through student yearbooks that matched the setting of the novel. His conclusion was that Ferrante was Marcella Marmo, a scholar of contemporary history at the University of Naples Federico II. Marmo denied the claim, as did Ferrante’s publishers, and so the search goes on.

This failed effort follows several more successful unmaskings. Earlier this month, scientists at Queen Mary University of London used geographic profiling to track down Banksy, seemingly confirming suspicions that his real name was Robin Gunningham. When dubstep producer Burial’s second album, Untrue, was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2007, it stoked interest in the musician’s identity. Aphex Twin and Fatboy Slim were among those suspected; the true Burial, William Bevan, was rather less well-known. The most prominent case in recent years, though, was the discovery that crime writer Robert Galbraith was actually the pen name of J. K. Rowling.

Image taken from the album cover for Burial’s ‘Untrue’, drawn by William Bevan

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Best foreign books translated into English

From Elena Ferrante to Joël Dicker, the best foreign books translated into English to broaden your literary horizons

It’s a peculiarly British condition to limit reading to our native tongue. Blame it on our Island isularity or notorious ineptitude at mastering foreign languages. Europeans have always approached their reading material with a cross-pollination of cultures and you don’t need to be a poly-linguist to read the very best new books from all around the world. Here’s our guide to the most exciting new books translated into English.

Italy

Elena Ferrante

The reclusive Italian writer, who uses a pen name and refuses to reveal her own identity, sparked what can only be described as Ferrante Fever with her irresistibly absorbing Neapolitan novels, My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Story of the Lost Child. The best-selling series had the whole world gripped, lost in the vivid descriptions of post war Italy, and deeply affected by the lucid tale of trust, tension and devotion between heroines Elena and Lila.

Now, Ferrante is our odds-on favourite to win the 2016 International Man Booker Prize for the final novel, The Story of the Lost Child. And, with the announcement of a Neapolitan novels TV adaptation, with which Ferrante herself will have creative involvement, Naples will be well and truly in the global spotlight.

They seek Elena Ferrante here…

Vanessa Thorpe

For 24 years now the bestselling writer of My Brilliant Friend and other acclaimed Neapolitan novels has evaded detection

The ego of a novelist can be an odd thing. A writer’s drive to express herself in fiction, and so impress her vision of the world on the reading public, is frequently coupled with improbable shyness.

In Italy, as the tireless hunt for the true identity of the bestselling author Elena Ferrante continues, it is hard not to applaud the success of this subterfuge. For 24 years now, the novelist behind My Brilliant Friend and three other celebrated Neapolitan novels has evaded detection. Last week, it was claimed she was Marcella Marmo, a professor at a Naples university. But both the academic concerned and Ferrante’s publishers have since flatly denied it. The American translator of the books, Ann Goldstein, also recently had to disappoint literary sleuths. Goldstein said she feels she knows Ferrante well and suspects she is an educated, middle-class woman. But it is not her.

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Who is Elena Ferrante? Behind the ‘unmasking’ of an author sworn to anonymity

Mike Doherty, Special to National Post | March 18, 2016 1:01 PM ET

“Who Is Elena Ferrante?” asked Milan newspaper Corriere Della Sera last weekend, and their guess at the real identity of the bestselling, pseudonymous author went viral over the course of the week. But a better question might be, “Why should we care?”

It’s one Ferrante herself would likely pose. In an email interview with the Financial Times last year — conducted via her publisher — the publicity shy writer wondered, “Who would be interested in what remains of me outside my books? The attention paid to them seems too much already.”

She may be falsely modest about her writing: The Story of the Lost Child, the fourth novel in her Neapolitan Quartet, has just been longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, and her psychologically intense exploration of female friendship has made her one of the most widely praised authors of our time.

But she’s right to ask why we should need to know about her as a person — especially as nobody’s suggesting she would be as captivating as one of her characters. Rather, in an age where oversharing is the norm, we are curious about her very desire to retain a truly private life.

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Who is Elena Ferrante? You Are