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Drama: Reading Europe - Italy: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Anastasia Hille

Monica Dolan

James Joyce

Daniel Ryan

Sylvestra Le Touzel

Jane Whittenshaw

Jayne McKenna

Caroline Gruber

Nicholas Gleaves

Sara Markland

Ferdinand Kingsley

Claudia Jolly

Louise Calf

Elena Ferrante

Timberlake Wertenbaker

Celia de Wolff

Drama on 4: Reading Europe - Italy: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Episode 2

Reading Europe - Italy: My Brilliant Friend

Episode 2

Reading Europe - Italy: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

BBC Radio 4 - Drama on 4, Reading Europe - Italy: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Episode 2

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, the continued story of a lifetime friendship.

Lena and Lila are now young women. Lila married at 16 and has a young son. Lena has escaped Naples, earned her college degree and published a successful novel.

The third book in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels, charting the lifelong relationship between two girls, Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, who grew up together in the slums of post-War Naples.

Elena, having escaped to Milan after the publication of her first book, struggles to find the courage to live, parent and write again after her marriage to her increasingly dismissive husband Pietro. 

Lila, meanwhile, also struggles to rise above her social conditions and desperately tries to find a way to better herself in whatever way she can. By day she suffers the daily abuse and exploitation at work in the local sausage factory and by night she works hard with her partner, Enzo, to make a difference with her life by studying hard the ever-changing face of technology. 

Struggling with periods of mental darkness, she also wrestles with being a parent and finding the time to be true to herself. Eventually she is encouraged by a group of old friends and young students to admit her anger at the social adversity and abuses suffered by the women at work in the factory and to stand up and shout about it. 

As always, amid the troubles, the two women turn to each other, gaining either strength or weakness from the other, not always to happy effect.

Dramatised for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Directed by Celia de Wolff


A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

Drama on 4: Reading Europe - Italy: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Adaptation of the third novel in Elena Ferrante's series about a lifelong friendship.

Adaptation of the third novel in Elena Ferrante's acclaimed series about a lifelong friendship.

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