I hadn’t been writing or even reading fiction for a long time. Maybe 10 years. Instead, I’d started a lovely journey into the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, which was giving me the necessary time and the tools to reflect on things, to develop some greater understanding and appreciation of my life, and I didn’t see any reason for coming back to reading and writing fiction, or any route that might allow it.
Then came an article in
The New York Time Book Review about a mysterious Italian author,
Elena Ferrante. The article was intriguing and made the writer sound unmissable. A good friend of mine — a fellow Buddhist practitioner for whom I hold something beyond tremendous admiration — had also read the article, and we were both curious...