We met Elena Ferrante at the Italian Cultural Institute in London the other day. Ok, that was a joke. We didn’t actually met the mysterious writer but her publisher, Sandra Ozzola Ferri, the only person in Italy (along with her husband) who really know what she looks like.
‘Please, don’t ask us for the hundredth time who she is’, Sandra said. ‘We promised not to reveal her identity and will keep our promise’. But there are other things she revealed. There will be a TV series based on the Neapolitan novels, for example, but Elena Ferrante will not participate in the script, even though she will have a word on it.
She will soon go back to writing. ‘It’s two years since the last book and she’s eager to start again. She was too busy giving interviews. She said she’d give one interview in every country the books were going to be translated. There are 40 countries now, and that makes 40 interviews. They have been published and translated in a book called La Frantumaglia ‘.
Her children book The beach at night, a spin off from The Lost Daugher will also be published in English in autumn.
Ferrante has been nominated one of the hundred most influential people of the year by Times.
