by Jennifer Levasseur

The internationally bestselling Italian author known as Elena Ferrante – beloved and controversial – retains the ultimate freedom as a writer. Her publisher protects her identity, she doesn't globetrot to literary festivals, and the press has no fodder to probe her relationships or appearance. Her novels on their own merit – and with some help from the intrigue – obsess readers. Obsess is too mild a term: they inflame, they enrapture. Readers find in Ferrante a voice, a provocation and a world complete to revisit compulsively. There is no proselytiser like a Ferrante fan.

The final volume of her engaging Neapolitan Novels, The Story of the Lost Child, appeared in September, concluding the cliff-hanging story of lifelong friends. Ferrante granted a single Australian interview, conducted via email. Though her books seem not to need her ("Physical absence from the public sphere makes the writing absolutely central," she tells me), Ferrante agreed to discuss her serial novel, ways to reframe how we read and the fight against male centrality.

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Source: http://www.smh.com.au/