Elena Ferrante, the doyenne of Italian literature, is renowned for her bestselling Neapolitan quartet and The Lost Daughter, adapted by Maggie Gyllenhaal into an acclaimed film starring Olivia Colman. (Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, including My Brilliant Friend, have sold 4 million copies in North America and over 8 million globally.)

With In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing (Europa)—four sparkling pieces based on a series of lectures—she brings out her toolbox, dissecting the creative process, her grand themes, and indelible characters while paying homage to authors and books that have shaped her. Reinvention, she discovers, is the name of her game.