Vanity Fair has a new interview with the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, an author whose true identity is not known.
In the interview, Ferrante discusses her last Neapolitan novel, The Story of the Lost Child, which comes out next month, as well as her thoughts on feminism. Here is an excerpt from the interview:
As to the definition of ‘feminist,’ I don’t know. I have loved and I love feminism because in America, in Italy, and in many other parts of the world, it managed to provoke complex thinking. I grew up with the idea that if I didn’t let myself be absorbed as much as possible into the world of eminently capable men, if I did not learn from their cultural excellence, if I did not pass brilliantly all the exams that world required of me, it would have been tantamount to not existing at all. Then I read books that exalted the female difference and my thinking was turned upside down.
You can read an excerpt from the novel on VF.com.