My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One

My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One

Soon to be an HBO series, book one in the <i>New York Times</i> 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, <i>The New York Times</i>)<br />  <br /> 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />“An intoxicatingly furious portrait of enmeshed friends,” writes <i>Entertainment Weekly</i>. “Spectacular,” says Maureen Corrigan on <i>NPR</i>’s Fresh Air. “A large, captivating, amiably peopled bildungsroman,” writes James Wood in <i>The New Yorker</i><br /><br />Ferrante is one of the world’s great storytellers. With <i>My Brilliant Friend</i> she has given her readers an abundant, generous, and masterfully plotted page-turner that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight readers for many generations to come.