I think many of you know the feeling of being in a reader’s slumber: you both want to read but whatever you are reading right now just isn’t cutting it. This was my case for the past months: while I absolutely loved reading The Karamazov Brothers, I barely made any progress due to it being quite a dense book and me being stressed with my Bachelor’s Thesis.

But here comes Elena Ferrante with her (?) My Brilliant Friend. A very easy to read book that is also filled with depth. Maybe my recent trip to Napoli, the city in which the book’s story takes place, had an effect on me, but I loved the way Ferrante paints the post-war city with all its harsh conditions: poverty, violence, lack access to education, young girls’ being treated as sort of a commodity, while boys are forced to work from a young age to help their families and so much more.

It’s really refreshing to read women written by a woman (presumably, as Ferrante is just a nickname and her true identity isn’t public) and it already feels (at least for me) as a classic despite being written a mere decade ago. I’m looking forward to finishing the other 3 of the Neapolitan Novels, but Ferrante is already on my best authors.