Conform New York Times, „Prietena mea genială”, scrisă de autoarea italiană Elena Ferrante, este considerată cea mai bună carte a secolului XXI.

„My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein and published by Europa Editions in 2012, topped The New York Times list of the best 100 books of the 21st century.

Ferrante’s Italian publisher celebrated the announcement with a press release quoting The New York Times: „Reading this unforgettable and uncompromising novel is like riding a bike on gravel: it’s brave, slippery, and stressful all at the same time,” wrote the American newspaper that crowned the mysterious Neapolitan author, who writes under a pseudonym for the first volume of her tetralogy, as reported by rainews.it.

Ferrante has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries. 503 Americans, including novelists, non-fiction writers, poets, critics, and other book lovers, coordinated by The New York Times Book Review staff, compiled the list of the best books published from January 1 to the present, with Ferrante being the only Italian with three books on the list.

Apart from Ferrante, the only authors with three books on the list are Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders. Authors with two books include Roberto Bolaño, Edward P. Jones, Denis Johnson, Alice Munro, Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, and Philip Roth.

Among the voters are bestselling authors such as Stephen King, James Patterson, Sarah Jessica Parker, as well as Bonnie Garmus, Claudia Rankine, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elin Hilderbrand, and Thomas Chatterton Williams.

In second place on the list of the best books of the 21st century is „The Warmth of Other Suns” (2010) by American Isabel Wilkerson, published in Italian by Il Saggiatore in 2013, while in third place is „Wolf Hall” (2009) by English writer Hilary Mantel (published in Italian by Fazi Editore in 2011), a fictional biography of the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell, the second Earl of Essex, at the court of Henry VIII of England between 1500 and 1535.

The first volume of what would become Ferrante’s compelling series of four Neapolitan novels, published in Italy by Edizioni E/O, „introduces readers to two girls growing up in a poor and violent neighborhood in Naples: the diligent and devoted Elena and her charismatic and wild friend Lila, who, despite her fierce intelligence, is seemingly limited by her family’s modest means. From here, the book (like the series as a whole) expands just as propulsively as the initial universe, embracing ideas about art and politics, class and gender, philosophy and destiny, all centered on the conflicted and competitive friendship between Elena and Lila as they grow into adulthood and complexity. It is impossible to say how closely the series follows the author’s life – Ferrante writes under a pseudonym – but it doesn’t matter,” concludes The New York Times. „‘My Brilliant Friend’ is „one of the best examples of so-called autofiction, a category that has dominated 21st-century literature.”