Italian investigative journalist Claudio Gatti has claimed that the identity behind the worldwide famous Elena Ferrante, the pseudonym behind the worldwide bestselling 'Neapolitan Novel' series, is Rome-based woman Anita Raja.
Ms Raja, the daughter of a Polish Jewish mother and Neapolitan father, has worked as a German translator and in publishing, according to media reports.
Gatti’s conclusion, published in an article in the New York Review of Books and Il Sore 24 Ore, was based on his review of payments that were allegedly made by Ferrante’s publishing house, Edizione E/O.
He said he could confirm this by looking at payments made to Edizione E/O, which revealed Anita Raja was the main beneficiary.
He also noted that a real estate record showed Raja and her husband Domenico Starnone had bought multi-million euro properties in Rome.
Raja has long been suspected as the author by Italian media, but no evidence was ever presented to back the claims.
Gatti said that Raja had not responded to requests for comment, but that he believed she should be transparent about her identity given that she and her publishers agreed to publish an autobiographical story, called ‘Frantumaglia’.
In the autobiographical story, she references a quote from Italo Calvino: "Ask me what you want to know, but I won’t tell you the truth, of that you can be sure.”
“I believe that by announcing that she would lie on her own ‘autobiographical’ essay, Ferrante has in a way relinquished her right to disappear behind her books and let them live and grow while their author remained unknown,” Gatti told The Guardian in an email.
Ferrante has long protected her identity from the public, telling the Guardian she has done so because of “The wish to remove oneself from all forms of social pressure or obligation. Not to feel tied down to what could become one’s public image. To concentrate exclusively and with complete freedom on writing and its strategies.”
Twitter users have backed their idol’s request for anonymity.
Elena Ferrante is well known for novels including “My Brilliant Friend” (2012), “The Story of the Lost Child” and “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay” (2014).
