Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante has maintained strict anonymity since her debut, and her true identity remains officially unconfirmed. In 2016, Italian journalist Claudio Gatti published an investigation claiming Ferrante is translator Anita Raja, but Ferrante and her publisher have neither confirmed nor denied this.

The four novels should be read in order: *My Brilliant Friend*, *The Story of a New Name*, *Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay*, and *The Story of the Lost Child*. They follow the lifelong friendship between Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo from childhood in 1950s Naples through old age.

Yes, HBO and Italian network RAI co-produced a television adaptation that premiered in 2018, filmed in Italian and later dubbed for international audiences. The series has been praised for its fidelity to Ferrante's source material and ran for multiple seasons covering the full Neapolitan Novels arc.

Ferrante has written several standalone novels, including *The Days of Abandonment* (2002), *The Lost Daughter* (2006), and *The Lying Life of Adults* (2020). *The Lost Daughter* was adapted into a 2021 film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal starring Olivia Colman.