The Story of the Lost Child

OVER 14M OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE. Nothing quite like this has ever been published before.”—The Guardian "This is high stakes, subversive literature.”—The Daily Telegraph “With the publication of her Neapolitan Novels, (Ferrante) has established herself as the foremost writer in Italy—and the world.”—The Sunday Times “An unconditional masterpiece . . . I was totally enthralled.”—Jhumpa Lahiri “An extraordinary epic.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “To the uninitiated, Elena Ferrante is best described as Balzac meets The Sopranos and rewrites feminist theory.”—The Times “Ferrante’s writing seems to say something that hasn’t been said before, in a way so compelling its readers forget where they are, abandon friends and disdain sleep.”—London Review of Books “Stunning. An intense, forensic exploration of friendship.”—The Times Literary Supplement. The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women— the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up—a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city’s obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.

"Elena Ferrante’s novels have a driving and unconventional narrative power that has gripped readers across a wide cultural range...the last of the quartet The Story of the Lost Child, which has just been longlisted for the Man Booker International prize, is the best.", "This final book in Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet brings a phenomenal literary enterprise to an arresting conclusion.", "A tribute to feminism and female friendship in mid-20th-century Naples." , "The final installation of her Neapolitan quartet, was every bit as sinister and compelling as its predecessors, a vivid and haunting portrait of female friendship that confirms Ferrante as one of the masters of her craft.", "The first work worthy of the Nobel prize to have come out of Italy for many decades."

Elena Ferrante is the author of The Days of Abandonment (Europa, 2005), Troubling Love (Europa, 2006), The Lost Daughter (Europa, 2008), and the four novels known as the Neapolitan Quartet (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child) which were published by Europa Editions between 2012 and 2015. My Brilliant Friend, the HBO series directed by Saverio Costanzo, premiered in 2018. Ferrante is also the author of Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (Europa, 2016), a children’s picture book illustrated by Mara Cerri, The Beach at Night (Europa, 2016), and a collection of personal essays illustrated by Andrea Ucini entitled Incidental Inventions (Europa, 2019). The Lost Daughter was made into a feature film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman. Her most recent novel is The Lying Life of Adults (Europa, 2020). In the Margins, a collection of original essays on reading and writing, was published by Europa in 2022.  Ann Goldstein is one of the most accomplished translators from the Italian working today. Best known for her translations of Elena Ferrante’s oeuvre, she has also translated novels by Primo Levi, Pierpaolo Pasolini, Alessandro Baricco and other classic and contemporary Italian writers.