Ferrante, Elena

There isn’t much reliable information available about the author behind the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. One thing is fairly certain: she is a woman who writes about how women live. She was probably born in 1943. Already when she delivered her first novel, Troubling Love (1992, L'amore molesto), to the publisher, she made it clear once and for all that "books, once they have been written, have no need of their authors. If they have anything to say, they will find their readers sooner or later." She has participated in interviews, but they have always been in the form of written questions, which she in turn has answered in writing. Some of these have been published in La Frantumaglia (2016). What has been said there, is that she grew up in Naples. She has studied Classical Languages and Literature, but is not a full-time writer; she also translates and teaches. She has children. It has not been easy to have been socially mobile – to have moved up in the social hierarchy – and she still feels guilt towards those that she left behind.