My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante's 2011 novel, translated into English by Ann Goldstein, opens the four-volume Neapolitan Quartet, one of the defining literary projects of the early twenty-first century. The story is told from old age by Elena Greco, who has just learned that her oldest friend Lila Cerullo has finally vanished without a trace, and who decides to set down everything she remembers of their shared life. They grow up together in a poor, violent neighborhood on the outskirts of postwar Naples, the daughters of a porter and a shoemaker, both fiercely intelligent, both desperate to escape, only one of whom is allowed to keep going to school. Ferrante traces their childhoods, their first stones thrown at boys, their reading of Little Women, and their early adolescence with a low, almost claustrophobic intensity that holds for hundreds of pages. The book hooked global readers on a friendship more honest than almost any other in modern fiction.
Themes & atmosphere
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What you might want to know about My Brilliant Friend
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Lila and Elena grow up in a poor Naples neighborhood in the 1950s. The novel follows their childhood and adolescence: shoemakers, marriages, school, books, and the small daily ways their fates start splitting apart.
Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels has four books: My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child. The series is complete.
Yes. HBO and RAI produced four seasons of My Brilliant Friend between 2018 and 2024, adapting all four novels. The Italian-language series is widely considered one of the most faithful literary adaptations of recent years.
My Brilliant Friend was written by Elena Ferrante, published in 2011 by Europa Editions.
My Brilliant Friend is 336 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, My Brilliant Friend takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
My Brilliant Friend is a standalone novel by Elena Ferrante, not part of a series.
My Brilliant Friend is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.