Aguilar: When Lena recalls the presentations she gives during the book tours, she seems to realize that she has used the lives of others. The same thing happens when she writes the novel about her childhood neighborhood. Do you think that fiction writing always involves some sense of guilt?

Ferrante: Absolutely yes. Writing—and not only fiction—is always an illicit appropriation. Our singularity as authors is a small note in the margin. The rest we take from the repository of those who have written before us, from the lives, from the most intimate feelings of others. Without the authorization of anything or anyone.