Soon to be an HBO series, book one in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends growing up in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted family epic by Italy's most beloved and acclaimed writer, Elena Ferrante, "one of the great novelists of our time." (Roxana Robinson, The New York Times)

Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Ferrante's four-volume...

Italian teenager Giovanna searches for a sense of identity and clear perspectives when she finds herself torn between the refinements and excesses of a divided Naples. "Giovanna's pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father...

Continues the story of Lina and Elena as they push against boundaries in 1970s Italy, where Lina has left her husband and is working in a factory while taking care of her son and Elena has graduated college and published a novel.

Once an aspiring writer, Olga traded literary ambition for marriage and motherhood; when Mario dumps her after 15 years, she is utterly unprepared. Though she tells herself that she is a competent woman, nothing like the poverella (poor abandoned wife) that mothers whispered about in her childhood, Olga falls completely apart. Routine chores overwhelm her; she neglects her appearance and forgets her manners; she throws herself at the older musician...

The New York Times best-selling and reclusive Italian authora̮ddressing such subjects as her choice to remain anonymous, her literary inspirations, Italian politics and culture and the role of the writer in modern societyp̮resents a brilliant collection of occasional writings, interviews and letters.

“A courageous novel, beautifully imagined and written.”
—Elena Lappin, The Washington Post
"De Cespedes' work has lost none of its subversive force”
—The New York Times Book Review
* "De Céspedes’s melancholy testament to a hidden life feels timeless and vital."
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
From the author of Forbidden Notebook, Alba de...