Reading Europe - Italy: My Brilliant Friend

From one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is the first in a quartet of books entitled The Neapolitan Novels. They are a forensic exploration of friendship between Lila and the story’s narrator Lena. This is no normal friendship, it is a friendship that loves, hurts, supports and destroys and yet it is one that lasts a lifetime.

It begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets two girls, Elena and Lila, learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not always perfect shelter from hardship.

It is the story of a nation, of a neighbourhood, a city and a country undergoing momentous change.

Starring Monica Dolan as Lena and Anastasia Hille is Lila, this first book centres on their childhood and adolescence and their younger selves are played by:

Lila (child) Grace Wingate
Lila (adolescent) Chloe Harris
Lena (Child) Elisabeth McEvilly
Lena (adolescent) Daisy Tompkinson

From the book by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein and published by Europa Editions.

From the same team that made War And Peace for BBC Radio 4, My Brilliant Friend was dramatised by Timberlake Wertenbaker and directed by Celia de Wolff.

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Publicity contact: ER