My Brilliant Friend is a ravishing, wonderfully written novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. The two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, sometimes to their own detriment, as each discovers more about who she is and suffers or delights in the throes of their intense friendship. There is a piercing honesty about Ferrante's prose that makes My Brilliant Friend a compulsively readable portrait of two young women, and also the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country. Elena Ferrante was born in Naples. She is the author of three other novels: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love and The Lost Daughter. She is one of Italy's most acclaimed authors. Ann Goldstein has translated Elena Ferrante's earlier novels. She is an editor at the New Yorker and a recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award. textpublishing.com.au 'Gutsy and compulsively readable...One of the more nuanced portraits of feminine friendship in recent memory...Ferrante wisely balances her memoir-like emotional authenticity with a wry sociological understanding of a society on the verge of dramatic change.' Vogue (US) 'Everyone should read anything with [Elena Ferrante's] name on it.' Boston Globe 'Her novels are intensely, violently personal, and because of this they seem to dangle bristling key chains of confession before the unsuspecting reader...[A] beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal.' James Wood, New Yorker 'Cinematic in the density of its detail.' Times Literary Supplement 'Elena Ferrante will blow you away.' Alice Sebold