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Joos: Do you think that writing about female characters from a female perspective requires courage? And, if not, why, in your view, has it been done so rarely and with so little care?

Ferrante: I don’t know if it takes courage. Certainly you have to get beyond the female gender, beyond the ima…

Ferrante: I’m very fond of The Lost Daughter. It cost me a lot to write. A story has to push beyond your very capacity to write it, you have to fear at every line that you won’t make it. The books I’ve published all originated like that, but The Lost Daughter left me feeling the way you do when you…

Ferrante: I publish to be read: it’s the only thing that interests me about publishing. So I employ all the strategies I know to capture the reader’s attention, stimulate curiosity, make the page as dense as possible and as easy as possible to turn. But I don’t think the reader should be indulged a…

She copied them from dresses worn by movie stars, princesses, from the models of fashion designers. But she had the gift of remaking them so that on her they seemed more charged with energy. My mother never sewed a dress for herself that didn’t make her appear an extraordinary woman. Whereas at hom…