For a writer, the desire to exist in the public imagination solely through language must be profound. What often happens is that the persona of the author undermines a detached evaluation of the work. Foucault dreamt of a situation where the interaction between the writer and the reader would remain uncontaminated by an apriori knowledge about the writer's background.

Until very recently, this utopia seemed to be the reality for Elena Ferrante, Italy's beloved writer. Although she has been active in the literary scene since the Nineties, it was only after the translation of her Neapolitan quartet - a coming-of-age tale of two girls in post-war Naples - that the English-speaking world began to take notice of her dazzling style. For all these years, Ferrante's identity has been kept a closely guarded secret by her publisher, Europa Editions. Meanwhile, a number of attempts were made by scholars to uncover her real identity, including one where a team of scientists at La Sapienza University used a special software to find textual similarities between the works of Ferrante and those of other writers. However, it was only after the revelatory and rather damning exposé by the Italian investigative journalist, Claudio Gatti, about Ferrante's real identity that people started seriously discussing her work. Polarized opinions seemed focused on the manner in which the investigation was conducted, and on whether Gatti was justified in violating Ferrante's privacy.

One question that both her votaries and critics elided was whether anonymity was a right exercised out of free choice or a compulsion forced upon an author owing to factors out of his or her control. It is worthwhile to remember here that the notion of authorship itself is linked to the enlightened idea of the self and is, therefore, tied to modern values of liberty and democratic rights. The right to exercise freedom of expression through words, either written or spoken, is something that is not 'chosen' but 'granted' by constitutional laws. Writers in countries where such freedoms are protected may take this right as self-evident, but in other parts of the world, where democratic institutions are fragile and human rights are not well-guarded, public intellectuals often have to exercise this right with great caution, and sometimes at great personal risk. Can one, therefore, really take artistic freedom for granted?

This brings us to another question related to literary truth and the ethics of writing. While the principle of art for art's sake should certainly be upheld, one must also ask whether an author should have some responsibility while projecting reality, especially of the marginalized people. If one has understood Gatti's argument correctly, one would say that he seems to be less concerned about Ferrante's anonymity and more about the fact that she is nothing like her characters - who fight poverty and patriarchy - but, in fact, lives comfortably, earning millions and owing properties in Rome and Tuscany. But why should Gatti or anybody else care? Had Ferrante been a 'writer's writer', who was short on sales and long on acclaim, would Gatti have pursued her case with the same ferocity?

But just because Gatti's project reeks of voyeurism, does it mean that we stop asking difficult questions about limits of creative licence? Is lived experience essential to delineate the truth? Is it possible to write about marginality, oppression, and trauma from a position of privilege? Some would answer in the affirmative. But if we are willing to give Ferrante the benefit of the doubt, we also have to take into account the praise and criticism faced by writers (predominantly white, European and male) of the past centuries for assuming the subject position of women, for writing about people of colour, or for creating their own fantastical versions of the colonized.

It is one thing to be anonymous, quite another to create a mythical version of one's own self. In a rather scathing review of her latest translated work, Michiko Kakutani contends that Ferrante's "self-dramatizing" and "self-indulgent" volume of personal letters and interviews, and her decision to publish it seem to undermine her stated assertion that "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors". There are no easy answers to the questions raised here. But given the fact that authors are now more closely bound to the profits from the sales, is it entirely unfair to ask that they should be more connected to the reality they portray, especially when the reality is not theirs?