Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

The third part of the Neapolitan quartet—already dubbed “the best literary epic of our time”—takes place in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. The story of Lenu Greco and Lila Cerullo’s friendship continues against a turbulent historical backdrop: student protests, street clashes, a growing labor union movement… After breaking up with her husband, Lila moves with her small son to a neighborhood of new-build apartments and works at a sausage factory. Lenu leaves Naples, finishes an elite college, publishes a book, and prepares to marry and become a member of an influential family. Life keeps driving them farther apart; they become merely voices at the other end of the line. Will their relationship withstand the test of change?