An international sensation on the strength of books like My Brilliant Friend, the writer known as Elena Ferrante has taken pains to hide her identity in the hope that readers would focus on her body of work. But in this volume, she parts the curtains on her workshop and offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk, offering up 20 years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews. Ultimately, this book creates a composite portrait of Ferrante, as she contemplates her relationship with psychoanalysis, with the cities she has lived in, with motherhood, with feminism, and with her childhood as a storehouse for memories, impressions, and fantasies.