Lenù is blonde, studious, eager to please, self-doubting and ambitious, whereas Lila is dark, naturally brilliant, mercurial, mean and irresistible to those around her. Isabelle Blank wrote about the complex, mirrored relation between the protagonists Lenu and Lila: 'Lenù and Lila are foils for one another. Themes Female Friendship Ĭentral themes in the novels include women’s friendship and the shaping of women’s lives by their social milieu, sexual and intellectual jealousy and competition within female friendships, and female ambivalence about filial and maternal roles and domestic violence. Lila, meanwhile, has become a successful entrepreneur, but she finds that it only draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood.

In this final novel of the quartet, she returns to Naples to be with the man she has always loved. Elena married, moved to Florence with her husband, started a family, and published several well-received novels. Main article: The Story of the Lost Childīoth Lila and Elena once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up. The first three books in the series have been adapted into an HBO television series entitled My Brilliant Friend. The Rose production, starring Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack, transferred to the Royal National Theatre in November 2019.

The series was adapted into a two-part play by April De Angelis at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, in March 2017. The series follows the lives of two perceptive and intelligent girls, Elena (sometimes called 'Lenù') Greco and Raffaella ('Lila') Cerullo, from childhood to adulthood and old age, as they try to create lives for themselves amidst the violent and stultifying culture of their home – a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Italy. The series has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries. In an interview in Harper's Magazine, Elena Ferrante has stated that she considers the four books to be 'a single novel' published serially for reasons of length and duration. The series has been characterized as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. In the original Italian edition, the whole series bears the title of the first novel L'amica geniale ('My Brilliant Friend'). The English-language titles of the novels are My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015). The Neapolitan Novels, also known as the Neapolitan Quartet, are a four-part series of fiction by the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, published originally by Edizioni e/o, translated into English by Ann Goldstein, and published by Europa Editions (New York).

L'amica geniale by Elena Ferrante