In the footsteps of Elena Ferrante: Up and down in Naples

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Gulf of Naples:"Whoever stays here has no chance"

A hill symbolizes the two worlds that exist side by side in Naples. It has a promise. Whoever lives upstairs has made it; the city offers him postcard views of the Gulf of Naples, Vesuvius and the historic center. In the Vomero district there are many villas and country houses in the splendid Art Nouveau style. They say the air in Vomero is cooler up on the hill.

Naples below is a different city; one of the repeatedly reproduced southern Italian clichés: Camorra, poverty, youthful gangs (so-called baby gangs), prostitution, small alleys with white laundry on the linen, dirt, the smell of frying fat, mopeds driving close by, older women on wooden chairs in front of their apartments, who constantly present danger of the active volcano.

Elena Ferrante deals with this duality of Naples in her new novel "The lying life of adults"; The main character is 13-year-old Giovanna, a student from a wealthy academic family who only discovers her own class in comparison with the life of an outlawed aunt. The uneducated, snotty Vittoria works as a cleaning lady, has no children and lives in the wrong area of ​​Naples.

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