News about Elena Ferrante’s death is circulating on social media with an apparent origin from translator Ann Goldstein, but the account reporting the news is false and there is no information about the writer’s death.
Claim: “I received terrible news from Rome. Elena Ferrante has passed away”
The news of Elena Ferrante’s death began circulating on X late this Tuesday morning in a publication apparently shared by Ann Goldstein, editor of the “New Yorker” magazine and translator into English of some of the works of this mysterious Italian writer, whose identity is unknown.
“I received terrible news from Rome. Elena Ferrante passed away. I hadn’t written for a while and was ill. Goodbye, my extraordinary, unforgettable and brilliant friend!”, says the publication, already with hundreds of shares and almost 350 thousand views.
Among the accounts sharing the supposed news are national public figures such as lawyer and political commentator Francisco Mendes da Silva and university professor and commentator Raquel Vaz Pinto.
Internationally, the news is being shared by journalists such as Nikki Marks, from the BBC, Indian writer Amitav Gosh, who shared the “very sad news” with his more than 450 thousand followers, and columnist Nicholas Kristoff, from the New York Times, who also shared the tweet with his 1.8 million followers.
Facts: the American translator’s account and information about the death are false
A search for the writer’s name does not reveal any news about her death. There are also no known official accounts of Ann Goldstein on social media and analysis of the account on X reveals that it was created a few days ago and has only a few dozen followers and four publications, which indicates that it may have been created specifically to share this news.
Furthermore, a publication from the same account made about three hours after the post about the writer’s death denied the information and pointed out possible authorship: “This news is false, [foi] created by Italian journalist Tommaso Debenedetti. But is Elena Ferrante still alive? She is fine? His last book was published in 2019 and his last article in 2021. Your editor should tell us something!”
Despite this “confession”, it has not yet been possible to verify whether the account was in fact created by Tommaso Debenedetti, a figure known for his involvement in several episodes of creating and disseminating false content, including alleged interviews with writers and fake news about the death of public figures such as the Pope, Fidel Castro and Elena Ferrante herself, in 2022.
In another recent episode, Tommaso Debenedetti is also attributed with false news about the death of Mexican writer and journalist Elena Poniatowska, aged 93, information that she denied through the Elena Poniatowska Amor Foundation account.
Meanwhile, in a community note added by an “experimental AI collaborator” from
The case has also been verified by Facta.news, an Italian fact-checking project, which concluded that it is another hoax by the “forger Tommaso Debenedetti”.
Lusa Verifica Assessment
The “news” about Elena Ferrante’s death that is circulating on social media is false, apparently originating from the account of American translator Ann Goldstein. In addition to there being no official information about the death of the Italian writer, the account that provided the information has already assumed that “the news is false” and had been created “by the Italian journalist Tommaso Debenedetti”, author of several false stories.
