AFP reports:
One of literature’s most talked-about mysteries appeared to have been cracked on Monday with the unmasking of the identity of the Italian publishing sensation Elena Ferrante.
In its wake, a literary row erupted over journalistic ethics and writers’ right to protect their identities and the personal back stories that may, or may not, inform their work.
Claudio Gatti, an Italian investigative journalist, says he has seen evidence of royalty payments that establish that Ferrante is a pen name for Anita Raja, a Rome-based translator who is married to a well-known novelist.
Reacting angrily to Gatti’s revelation, Ferrante’s publisher did not deny his claim.
Instead it railed against the perceived breach of the writer’s right to privacy.
Read more on The Hindu.
You have a great writer writing anonymously and you risk stifling her or dissuading her from writing more by outing her… why? To satisfy public curiosity about her identity?
What a shame.