My Brilliant Friend: The Story of a New Name, Youth

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER

"One of the great novelists of our time."--Roxana Robinson, the New York Times

Lila has recently married and made her entr e into her husband's family business. Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the Neapolitan neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase of their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. The two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives. In this "large, captivating, amiably peopled bildungsroman," (James Wood, The New Yorker) Elena Ferrante gives readers a poignant, universal story about friendship, class, and belonging.

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), which was made into a film directed by Roberto Faenza, Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), adapted by Mario Martone, and The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), soon to be a film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is also the author of a Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016) in which she recounts her experience as a novelist, and a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016). The four volumes known as the ＂Neapolitan quartet＂ (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) were published in America by Europa between 2012 and 2015. The first season of the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, directed by Severio Costanzo premiered in 2018.

Ann Goldstein has translated into English all of Elena Ferrante’s books, including each of the New York Times bestselling installments in Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, the fourth of which, The Story of the Lost Child, was shortlisted for the MAN Booker International Prize. She has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. She lives in New York.