My Brilliant Friend (Book 1 Of The Neapolitan Novels)

Description: Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Ferrante's four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its protagonists, the fiery and unforgettable Lila, and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflictual friendship. Book one in the series follows Lila and Elena from their first fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists. "An intoxicatingly furious portrait of enmeshed friends," writes Entertainment Weekly. "Spectacular," says Maureen Corrigan on NPR's Fresh Air. "A large, captivating, amiably peopled bildungsroman," writes James Wood in The New Yorker Ferrante is one of the world's great storytellers.

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist, who has said that she was born in 1943 in Naples. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are among her best known works. Time magazine called Ferrante one of the 100 most influential people in 2016.