--- title: Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels and the History of Naples description: As the fourth and final book comes out in English, a look at what it would have been like to really grow up in Elena's world canonical: https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-31T11:30:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-14T02:28:43.000Z article:section: History og:title: The Historical Truth Behind Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels og:description: As the final book comes out in English, a look at the true story of a city og:url: https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53332c98f5df942d/698860d5cf40a80ec9c3f64f/150825-naples-italy-09.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: Naples Italy 1960 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Historical Truth Behind Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels twitter:description: As the final book comes out in English, a look at the true story of a city twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53332c98f5df942d/698860d5cf40a80ec9c3f64f/150825-naples-italy-09.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Historical Truth Behind Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=88f1cf5b-2be2-4608-a752-98564d4bf17d&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=88f1cf5b-2be2-4608-a752-98564d4bf17d&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Person of the Year 2013 Shortlist: Edith Windsor [Watch (HLS stream): Person of the Year 2013 Shortlist: Edith Windsor](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/9hpSZrim.m3u8) (2:02)  _Published 2013-12-11. TIME's Eliza Gray explains why gay rights activist Edith Windsor is on the short list for the 2013 TIME Person of the Year_ by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Updated: Dec 14, 2023 2:28 AM UTCPublished: Aug 31, 2015 11:30 AM UTC  Boys proudly showing buckets of garlic in the middle of a road. Naples, February 1960. Boys proudly showing buckets of garlic in the middle of a road. Naples, February 1960. Mario De Biasi—Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Updated: Dec 14, 2023 2:28 AM UTCPublished: Aug 31, 2015 11:30 AM UTC **Correction appended, Sept. 8** In the three years since _My Brilliant Friend_ was first published in English, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels have [wooed](http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/elena-ferrante-a-new-breed-of-writer-girl-crush.html) [many](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/books/writing-has-always-been-a-great-struggle-for-me.html) [readers](http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/elena-ferrante-liking-like) with their forceful elegance and unusual perspective on friendship. But, while the relationship between protagonists Elena and Lila is the story’s heart, there’s another character exerting a strong influence on their lives: the city of Naples, which is portrayed in gritty detail throughout the novels. When [_My Brilliant Friend_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609450787/?tag=timecom-20) begins, Elena and Lila are primary school students, born near the end of World War II and growing up there in the 1950s and ’60s. Though Elena escapes to a better life in other cities in the subsequent books, [_The Story of a New Name_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609451341/?tag=timecom-20) and [_Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/160945233X/?tag=timecom-20), Naples maintains a gravitational pull on her. In [_The Story of the Lost Child_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609452860/?tag=timecom-20)_—_the series’ final installment, out Tuesday in the U.S.—she finally returns to her hometown, where life is as turbulent as ever. While Elena and Lila have their ups and downs, Naples is consistently depicted as a place of violence, poverty and social unrest. And, in large part, that’s for good reason: though Ferrante’s characters are fictional, her Naples is based on truth. The 20th-century history of Naples was a particularly hard one, explains Rutgers University Associate Professor Paola Gambarota, who is writing a book about the city, and the devastation experienced during the war set it up to be a place of remarkable deprivation and struggle. Naples was bombed more than 100 times during World War II, and when the Germans prepared to evacuate the city before the Allies landed in 1943, “Nazis destroyed the whole port,” she says, “because they knew that this would be the main port of operation for the Allies.” When troops arrived, the water, gas and electricity systems had all been destroyed. Because the shipping system had been paralyzed, citizens were at first guaranteed only 100 calories-worth of food per day by the Allies. The destruction was so great, Gambarota says, “Maybe only Berlin in 1945 can be compared.” While the Allied forces quickly restored the city’s infrastructure, problems remained: The black market was a powerful force in the port city, and as much as a third of the goods imported by the Allies were stolen and sold illegally. While wealthier Neapolitans had been able to flee to safer areas, like Sorrento or Capri, the poor and the petit bourgeoisie stayed behind to suffer the consequences, though some also benefited from the black market, like the Solara family in Ferrante’s novels. The city had already been poor before the war—little was invested in the South when Italian Unification began a century earlier—but afterward, Gambarota says, “the socioeconomic situation in Naples…was worse than anywhere else.” Education was a luxury. While it was possible to be lucky like Elena and go on to advanced schooling, many children went the way of Lila, dropping out at a young age in order to earn money for their families. Nevertheless, as the daughter of a shoemaker, Lila would not have been truly impoverished by the city’s standards. “Poverty there \[in the ’50s\] meant you lived seven people to one room, and that there was nothing to eat. People with no shoes,” Gambarota says. “It’s not the poverty that we know here.” Domestic violence, which many women experience in the books, “was a daily thing,” she says. This is thanks in part to the fact that until 1975, she says, wives basically had the same legal rights as children. Outside the home, violence was just as bad; Gambarota, who was born in nearby Avellino but moved with her family to Naples while she was still young, remarks that while the Neapolitan culture is rich, “it’s a tough town,” and even more so in the areas surrounding the city center, like Lila and Elena’s neighborhood. American readers of Ferrante’s work (translated to English by Ann Goldstein) may also wonder about the sections where a character is said to have spoken “in dialect” rather than in proper Italian. Ferrante also uses that _in dialetto_ designator in her original text, says New York University Assistant Professor of Italian Studies Rebecca Falkoff, with only a few exceptions in which dialect words are written out. The split between those who speak mostly Italian and those who speak mostly Neapolitan is one more indicator of the true difficulties of life in Ferrante’s Naples, in which less educated people have trouble communicating with the rest of the world. Even today, Falkoff says, though spoken Italian is widely understood, “for a native speaker of dialect who did not complete secondary schooling and had little experience beyond his or her local community, it might be very difficult to produce grammatically correct standard Italian.” And to all the practical commonalities between Ferrante’s Naples and the real Naples, Gambarota adds one more intangible similarity: a certain longing to escape, especially among women. “In order to evade that daily violence, that daily force that you were subjected to—and there are some small things but really very difficult things—you just have to go away,” she says. “And this has happened to so many of us. You just have to get away. You just have, at a certain point, a feeling that there is nothing that you can change. And that’s another unchangeable thing in Naples.” ### How to be a "Lady Author," 1969  Author of "The Beauty Trap," Jeanne Rejaunier. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. A lady author must: swim a little. Jeanne appreciates the water. She lives in a Hollywood apartment and doesn't have a pool of her own yet, but she uses one belonging to a friend whenever she wants. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. A lady author must: exercise in a bikini. Writing a minor best-seller is sedentary work, but when promoting one a lithe figure is very useful. This contraption strengthens the stomach muscles and figures of speech. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Author of "The Beauty Trap," Jeanne Rejaunier. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. A lady author must: have her own billboard. There is a special thrill, Jeanne admits, to seeing yourself on a Hollywood billboard. Now that her face is well-known, she often visits bookstores and boosts her novel's sales. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Jeanne Rejaunier is a lady author, as you can plainly see—the new sort of lady author is always photographed in bed. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Author of "The Beauty Trap," Jeanne Rejaunier. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. A lady author must: Jeanne's first purchase with $15,000 advance was Red Pepper (left), a chestnut gelding. She fell off last year, broke a vertebra and wore a brace for months. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Author of "The Beauty Trap," Jeanne Rejaunier. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. A lady author must: commune with nature. There isn't an awful lot of nature to commune with in Hollywood, but Jeanne does her best with a rake and leaves, both borrowed from her apartement house. The Victorian dress is brand-new. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Author of "The Beauty Trap," Jeanne Rejaunier. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images **Correction**: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the distribution of food during Allied occupation of Naples. The citizens of the city were only guaranteed 100 calories per day by the Allied Forces.  Young mother and her child in their shack-like residence set up in a cellar in Margellina, Naples in 1947. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone—Getty Images  Water fountain in slum neighborhood. Naples, Italy, 1947. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Kids in slum neighborhood helping prepare cardboard for shoe soles of recycled shoes that will be sold as new. Naples, Italy, 1947. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Young mothers feeding their babies on the steps of the church of San Francesco di Paola while a gang of unemployed boys play cards in the background. Naples, Italy, 1947. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  An Italian woman holding a baby in the doorway of her home in Naples, 1950. Three Lions—Getty Images  Friday is Wash Day for the people of Naples, Italy, July 1956. Keystone Features/Hulton Archive—Getty Images  People walking in the street in via San Gregorio Armeno in Naples. Naples, 1961. Mondadori Portfolio—Getty Images  Glimpse of Naples from above, 1960. Mario De Biasi—Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images  Boys proudly showing buckets of garlic in the middle of a road. Naples, February 1960. Mario De Biasi—Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images  A woman reading a book in the Mergellina area at the foot of Posillipo hill. Naples, 1963. Mondadori Portfolio—Getty Images ## Transcript Edit Windsor is one of Time's 2013 People of the Year. >> Edith, Edith, Edith, Edith. >> This summer, the Supreme Court struck down the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which had defined marriage as between one man and one woman. Edith Windsor was the plaintiff in that case. It started with a lawsuit that she filed. She had sued the IRS for back taxes that she had to pay when her spouse died because it was a same sex marriage and therefore, not valid. So, when the Supreme Court made their decision, Edie won. She got her refund and changed the way the Federal Government looks at marriage. When the decision came down, she became a hero in the gay rights movement and really in the country as a whole. Certainly, her victory inspired a lot of people. She had been married to her spouse, Thea for only a couple of years but they had been together since 1965. >> We, ourselves have come out in every [ unk ] and we see each other and love each other. >> So, when Edie won her case besides the sort of obvious impact of overturning a federal ban on gay marriage, the decision actually had a lot of far reaching implications for people's lives that they were able to experience immediately. The things like state taxes to survivors veterans benefits, to whether or not your spouse can get a green card. The court decision gave gay people lot of dignity and even for people who are not gay establishing that human right and human dignity was a huge win for all of us and really made our country a stronger or better place. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/"},"headline":"The Historical Truth Behind Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels","datePublished":"2015-08-31T11:30:11.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-14T02:28:43.000Z","description":"As the fourth and final book comes out in English, a look at what it would have been like to really grow up in Elena's world","url":"https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/","keywords":["Books","Italy","photography","Culture","WWII"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53332c98f5df942d/698860d5cf40a80ec9c3f64f/150825-naples-italy-09.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53332c98f5df942d/698860d5cf40a80ec9c3f64f/150825-naples-italy-09.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Naples Italy 1960","caption":"Sale of garlic and lemons in a Naples street","creditText":"Mario De Biasi—Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/","name":"The Historical Truth Behind Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Person of the Year 2013 Shortlist: Edith Windsor","description":"TIME's Eliza Gray explains why gay rights activist Edith Windsor is on the short list for the 2013 TIME Person of the Year","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/9hpSZrim/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-12-11T12:42:22.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/9hpSZrim.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/","duration":"PT2M2S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4010504/neapolitan-novels-history/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```