“My brilliant friend” by Elena Ferrante, in English translation by Ann Goldstein and published by Europa Editions under the title “My Brilliant Friend” in 2012, took first place on the “New York Times” list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
Elena Farrante’s book was declared the best by the New York Times PHOTO: Facebook/Elena Farrante
Ferrante’s Italian publisher celebrated the announcement with a press release echoing the New York Times’ message: “Reading this unforgettable and uncompromising novel is like riding a bike on gravel: it’s brave, slippery and stressful all at the same time“, wrote the American newspaper that crowned the mysterious Neapolitan author, who writes under a pseudonym for the first volume of her tetralogy, writes rainews.it.
Ferrante has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries. 503 Americans, including novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics, and other book lovers, coordinated by the staff “New York Times Book Review“, compiled the list of the best books published from January 1 to the present, in which Ferrante is the only Italian on the list with three books.
Apart from Ferrante, the only writers with three books on this list are Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders. The two-book writers are Roberto Bolaño, Edward P. Jones, Denis Johnson, Alice Munro, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, and Philip Roth.
Voters include bestselling authors such as Stephen King, James Patterson, Sarah Jessica Parker, and then Bonnie Garmus, Claudia Rankine, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elin Hilderbrand and Thomas Chatterton Williams.
On the second place in the list of the best books of the 21st century was “In the warmth of the distant sun” (2010) by the American Isabel Wilkerson, published in Italian by Il Saggiatore in 2013, while in third place was “The Hall of the Wolf” (2009) by the English writer Hilary Mantel (published in Italian by Fazi Editore in 2011). , set between 1500 and 1535, a fictional biography of the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell, 2nd Earl of Essex, at the court of Henry VIII of England.
The first volume in what would become Ferrante’s compelling four-book series of Neapolitan novels, published in Italy by Edizioni E/O, writes the New York Times, “introduces readers to two girls growing up in a poor and violent neighborhood in Naples: the diligent and devoted Elena and her charismatic and wild friend Lila, who, despite her fierce intelligence, is seemingly limited by her family’s modest means. From here, the book (like the series as a whole) expands as propulsively as the original universe, embracing ideas about art and politics, class and gender, philosophy and destiny, all centered on the conflicted and competitive friendship between Elena and Lila as they become adults and get complicated. It’s impossible to say how closely the series follows the author’s life – Ferrante writes under a pseudonym – but it doesn’t matter. concludes The New York Times, it is “one of the best examples of the so-called autofiction, a category that has dominated the literature of the 21st century”.
