If you liked
Books like My Brilliant Friend
by Elena Ferrante
My Brilliant Friend is Elena Ferrante's first Neapolitan Novel — two girls growing up together in a poor neighborhood of 1950s Naples. The four-book sequence is one of the canonical contemporary European literary tetralogies. If you finished the first volume and needed more reading in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
Normal Peopleby Sally Rooney
“Normal People by Sally Rooney 2018 review. Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small Sligo town, attend Trinity College Dublin together, and orbit each other across four years of intermittent intimacy. The literary-fiction novel that defined the Rooney moment.”
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeousby Ocean Vuong
“On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 2019 review. A young Vietnamese-American man writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his Hartford childhood and the OxyContin crisis that takes his first love. Vuong's debut novel.”
Klara and the Sunby Kazuo Ishiguro
“Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 2021 review. Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches the children passing by the storefront and waits to be chosen. Late-career Ishiguro at his most patient and most strange.”
The Great Believersby Rebecca Makkai
“The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 2018 review. Two parallel narratives — Yale in the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and Fiona in 2015 Paris. National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist 2019.”
FAQ
Common questions about My Brilliant Friend read-alikes
- Should I read the rest of the Neapolitan Novels next?
- Yes. The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015) are the rest of the tetralogy. The four-book sequence is meant to be read as a single work and the later volumes deepen what the first volume only sketches.
- I want more Elena Ferrante.
- The Lost Daughter (2006) and The Lying Life of Adults (2019) are the standalone novels worth reading after the tetralogy. The Lost Daughter became the 2021 Maggie Gyllenhaal film with Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson.
- I want another novel about female friendship.
- A Little Life (Hanya Yanagihara, male-friendship version of the same project), Normal People (Sally Rooney, on-and-off relational version), and The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai on Chicago gay community during AIDS). All three handle long-arc friendship at different scales.
- I want another European or translated literary novel.
- Pachinko (Min Jin Lee on Korean-Japanese twentieth-century diaspora), On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong on Vietnamese-American family), and Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro on near-future English literary tradition). All three are doing related contemporary work in different geographies.
The original