Global Education Oregon Menu

Elena Ferrante's "Neapolitan Quartet" is a sequence of four novels set in the southern city of Naples. This narrative of family saga spans six decades between the end of WW2 and the turn of the 21st century. The books follow the two major characters, Elena and Lila, from childhood to love, sex, marriage, adultery, divorce, as well as through their careers and political awakenings. Their paths shall diverge and reunite as dictated by circumstances and personal decisions. In tracing the decades long friendship of Elena and Lila's though the biological cycle of birth, youth, maturity and death, the "Neapolitan Quartet" also evoke the history of 20th-century Italian politics. Ferrante shows subtly how the struggles between fascists and communists on a national scale are rooted in deep-set neighborhood hierarchies. Last but not the least, the author challenges the corroding pull of the forces that shape us from birth, gender, class, parents, friends, location over the identities people aspire to create for themselves.