On Nov. 6, 2019, months before the coronavirus swept Italy, customers lined up outside bookstores there waiting for The Lying Life of Adults, the new novel from Elena Ferrante, whose Neapolitan quartet has become an international phenomenon.

Book groups across the country held vigils reading aloud from previous works by their favorite author. Meanwhile, a select group of journalists counted down the hours until they would receive an encrypted PDF of the new 336-page novel, which they were told would take five or six hours to read—giving them enough time to file reviews for the morning editions of their papers.