The Story of the Lost Child

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante is the fourth and final volume of the Neapolitan novels — the culmination of a saga that has followed Elena and Lila from childhood to old age across sixty years of Italian history. As the series ends, the full meaning of their extraordinary friendship — its love, its competition, its symbiosis, and its mysteries — comes into final, devastating focus. Ferrante resolves the questions she has been circling throughout the tetralogy while leaving the deepest ones productively open. The final pages are among the most powerful in contemporary fiction. Published by Europa Editions, this is essential for anyone who has come this far — the worthy conclusion to one of the great literary achievements of the twenty-first century.