Following her mother's untimely death, Delia sets off on a breathtaking odyssey through the chaotic, suffocating streets of her native Naples in search of the truth about her family. Reality is buried in the fertile soil of memory, and Delia digs deep to reconcile the past with the mysterious events leading up to her mother's death. Spurred by a series of anonymous telephone calls, Delia reconstructs her mother's final days and with every new discovery must face the possibility that her mother was not at all the person Delia imagined her to be. To learn the truth and to untangle the knot of lies, passions and memories that bind mother and daughter, Delia must return to her roots, to the Naples of her childhood.

One of the most celebrated Italian novels of recent decades, and subsequently a successful film by director Mario Martone, Troubling Love is Elena Ferrante's astounding first novel.