Domenico Starnone

Domenico Starnone (born 15 February 1943) is an Italian writer, screenwriter, and journalist. He is a prolific book author, having penned at least 22 works since 1987, at least four of which have been translated from Italian into English, including Prima esecuzione (2007, as First Execution, 2009) and Confidenza (2019, as Trust, 2019). His novel Via Gemito won the Premio Strega in 2001, and movies by Gabriele Salvatores, Riccardo Milani, and Daniele Luchetti have been based on Starnone books.In reports dating to at least 2006 (by Luigi Galella), and more recent scholarly work appearing in 2017 (by Arjuna Tuzzi and Michele A. Cortelazzo of the University of Padova), work focused on textual similarities between authors, Starnone has been proposed to be the Italian author writing under the pen name, Elena Ferrante, a role also suggested for his wife, Anita Raja, based on a financial analysis. Ferrante has, via published interviews, dismissed the allegation, stating "My identity, my sex can be found in my writing" and suggesting that the attention to the question was more illustrative of the character of contemporary Italians than anything else. Starnone, for his part, in the press and in his books, strenuously denies his being the author behind Ferrante's works, arguing other obvious contextual reasons for the analysed textual similarities.