Who is the real Italian novelist writing as Elena Ferrante?

As the fame of the Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay author grows, so does the guessing game about her identity

Elena Greco knows what it is to be a writer with a public face. She knows the thrill of her name in print and the satisfaction of telling the doubters back home: I did it. But she also knows the pitfalls of tying ones identity to a tell-all novel: the facile media, the unkind critics, and the cringing embarrassment of old friends trawling through the dirty bits with raised-eyebrows and judgmental zeal.

Greco, however, is a fictional character, the narrator of a three soon to be four novel series about the lives of two young women in post-war Italy. In stark contrast to her fictional heroine, the writer who created her shuns the limelight completely, to the extent that no one, except a handful of people close to her, knows who she is. Over the past two decades Elena Ferrante a pseudonym, of course has become one of her countrys most exciting and compelling contemporary literary voices. And, as her celebrity grows, so too does the guessing game surrounding her identity.

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