The Novelist Who Inspired Elena Ferrante

In September of 1943, Elsa Morante and her husband, the novelist Alberto Moravia, fled their apartment in Rome with little more than the clothes on their backs and some canned sardines. Benito Mussolini had been deposed by his own Grand Council, and German troops had taken over the Italian capital, beginning a nine-month occupation. The two writers had plenty to fear: they were both of Jewish descent, and Moravia, who was an outspoken critic of Fascism, had learned that he would be imminently arrested. The couple’s journey eventually led them to a one-room hut built on a mountainside outside the city of Fondi. They brought only two books with them: the Bible and “The Brothers Karamazov,” the latter of which they resorted to using as toilet paper.