The pseudonymous Italian writer Elena Ferrante is best known for her Neopolitan Novels, starting with My Brilliant Friend in 2012. A coming-of-age story chronicling the lives of Lenù and Lila, the series has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries. Her most recent work, The Lying Lives of Adults, was released in English in September, to debut at number two on the NYT bestseller list for fiction.
Ferrante recently shared a recommended reading list with publisher Europa Editions, highlighting 40 works of literature written by 20th-century female novelists. She described it as, “Stories of women who have two feet in the 1900s, or one in the following century.”
From Flannery O’Connor to Toni Morrison, find Ferrante’s favorites below. Complement with the reading lists of Chimamanda Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, and Zadie Smith.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (also rec’d by Gabrielle Union, Greta Gerwig, & Lupita Nyong’o)
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar
Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
Outline by Rachel Cusk
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (also rec’d by Sam Harris & St. Vincent)
A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
The Years by Annie Ernaux
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (also rec’d by Florence Welch)
Motherhood by Sheila Heti
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakam
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Dear Life by Alice Munro
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
Accabadora by Michela Murgia
Le Bal by Irene Nemirovsky
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
The Love Object: Selected Stories by Edna O’Brien
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (also rec’d by Bruce Springsteen)
Neapolitan Chronicles by Anna Maria Ortese
Gilead by Marylinne Robinson
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (also rec’d by Liz Phair)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Door by Magda Szabò
Cassandra by Christa Wolf
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (also rec’d by Gabrielle Union & Roxane Gay)
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
(via Bookshop)