100 Best Italian Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best italian books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
Eric RipertA fascinating study and still wholly relevant. (Source)
Neil deGrasse TysonWhich books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? [...] The Prince (Machiavelli) [to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. (Source)
Ryan HolidayOf course, this is a must read. Machiavelli is one of those figures and writers who is tragically overrated and underrated at the same time. Unfortunately that means that many people who read him miss the point and other people avoid him and miss out altogether. Take Machiavelli slow, and really read him. Also understand the man behind the book–not just as a masterful writer but a man who... (Source)
Vanora BennettI read this a few years ago and it was one of those books you always remember because it creates a whole new way of thinking. I had no idea at the time that the medieval mindset was any different to the modern one. It is about the adventure of a Franciscan friar and his novice in medieval Italy and it is part murder mystery, part game with semiotics and medieval knowledge. At university I read... (Source)
Nicole BaldinuI didn’t want this book to end. And I’ve gone back and listened to the audio version in Italian too. I’m lucky that my second language is Italian, as I got to enjoy it twice over! This book was wildly successful and for good reasons, it has everything you’d want in a story, love, friendship, history, humor, sadness and tragedy. All in four delicious volumes that, again, you wish would keep going... (Source)
Flora PringleI think Elena Ferrante writes brilliantly about the challenges of motherhood and building something for yourself. In the Neapolitan Novels she talks about her character breaking out of her poor, restrictive, mafia background through reading and learning. She breaks her boundaries and becomes an accomplished writer. In the third book particularly, Elena speaks fluently about the envy we feel of... (Source)
"Ciardi has given us a credible, passionate persona of the poet, stripped of the customary gauds of rhetoric and false decoration, strong and noble in utterance." Dudley Fitts
"A sensitive and perceptive translation;a spectacular achievement." Archibald MacLeish
Belonging in the immortal company of the great works of literature, Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is a moving human drama, an unforgettable visionary journey through the infinite torment...
A N WilsonI don’t think there’s anything in world literature to compare with the last few cantos of the Paradiso as a Christian statement. (Source)
Colin ThubronOh God. Well, officially it’s Marco Polo describing the cities of his travels to Kublai Khan. It’s been opined that every city he describes is a version of Venice, but I think that doesn’t really work. They seem to me to be marvellous imaginative fantasies, which sometimes reproduce states of mind. There are 40 or so cities described, all entirely imaginary I think, and that’s what’s so magical... (Source)
James MeekIt has different layers. The set-up is that Kublai Khan has conquered this vast empire; an empire so large that he, sitting at the centre of it, cannot know all the many parts of it. He can’t visit them, he can’t see them, and if he goes to one part all the other parts have changed. So he sits there at the centre of his empire and Marco Polo travels around and visits the various cities and comes... (Source)
Robert BaerThis book is all about Italians stationed on a remote Eurasian frontier. Of course they never were, but The Tartar Steppe is a metaphor for devoting your life to a higher good, for wanting to do public service and to make a difference. And you essentially give up everything. The main character, Giovanni Drogo, gives up his fiancée, his mother and his friends to wait for the Tartars who never... (Source)
Most of the footnotes are taken from various translations and commentaries (listed below), some of which utilize many of the older commentators such as Boccacio, Benvenuto, Scartazzini, etc. I have avoided material thats get overly involved in language issues or meter, since... more
Nick HavelyIt is a close and reliable translation, with the original text on the facing page, and it also has excellent notes. (Source)
Chris WalshThe Inferno is the classic moment of people not wanting to talk about cowardice. (Source)
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H. McWilliam less
Marion TurnerThe Decameron specifically is a story about ten people who decide to escape the plague by going to a lovely country house with their servants. They tell stories there: ten stories a day for ten days, so there are 100 stories. The stories tend to be very, very funny. A lot of them are very rude. (Source)
Jenny DavidsonThe premise of the book is that a group of young noblemen and -women, people of great privilege who have been able to flee the plague-ridden city, are telling each other stories to while away their time together in the luxurious villa to which they’ve retreated. The description of the plague in the frame narrative is very vivid and quite horrifying; it sets a dark tone. (Source)
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Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up—a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final book, she has returned to Naples. Lila, on the... more
Esther PerelOne of the most powerful books one ought to read. (Source)
David BlaineAmazing. (Source)
Aleksandar HemonLevi regains reason, by treating his experience in Auschwitz as something that is subject to rational analysis. (Source)
Nick CleggThis is one of the very few novels that I’ve read twice. (Source)
Bored with their work, and after reading too many manuscripts about occult conspiracy theories, three vanity publisher employees (Belbo, Diotallevi and Casaubon) invent their own conspiracy for fun. They call this satirical intellectual game "The... more
Igor DebaturQuestion: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche The Castle by Franz Kafka 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Source)
Cosimo di Rondó, a young Italian nobleman of the eighteenth century, rebels against his parents by climbing into the trees and remaining there for the rest of his life. He adapts efficiently to an existence in the forest canopy—he hunts, sows crops, plays games with earth-bound friends, fights forest fires, solves engineering problems, and even manages to have love affairs. From his perch in the trees, Cosimo sees the Age of Enlightenment pass by, and a... more
In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and “Italian citizen of Jewish race,” was arrested by Italian fascists and deported from his native Turin to Auschwitz. Survival in Auschwitz is Levi’s classic account of his ten months in the German death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and... more
A hymn to self-delusion and procrastination ZENO'S CONSCIENCE has provoked enormous affection in its readers both in Italian and English since its first publication in the 1920s. less
Tim ParksLet’s make a quick comment about Svevo. Svevo was not his real name. His real name was Schmitz and he grew up as a German speaker in the area of Trieste where there was a big linguistic mix, so Italian was his second language. He had written a number of books which he self-published, which was quite common at that time, and received no attention at all really, so he was a failure in that regard.... (Source)
A naughty wooden puppet gets into trouble, disobeys his father, forgets his pomises, and skips through life looking for fun. Just like a "real boy." Until he learns that to become truly real, he must open his heart and think of others. less
William FiennesThey’re a mixture of short stories and autobiographical essays, or essays in autobiography. Levi uses the elements from the periodic table as a way of organising memory. He uses 21 elements, each as a doorway or wormhole into a particular area of his experience, into a particular memory – but leaving out his time in Auschwitz, because he’d already written about that. You get his early interest in... (Source)
Tim RadfordIt’s a life story by a chemist seen through the prism of an elemental substance. Some of it doesn’t work very well and some of it works very well. There’s a lovely chapter on iron that refers to the arrival of the Fascist era. There’s a much more personal account involving mine tailings and the extraction of precious metals from mine tailing, which he was employed at. That gives him a chance to... (Source)
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Paul TherouxI chose this book because not many people know it – it’s hardly on every bookshelf. Carlo Levi was an Italian Jew from Florence, banished in the 1930s by the Mussolini government for criticising the war in Ethiopia. He is sent to the ends of the earth, and it happens that the ends of the earth in Italy is southern Italy. (Source)
Paula FredriksenThis is such a beautiful memoir. Levi was in political exile for a year under Mussolini, sent to a very impoverished town in the south of Italy. Levi himself is from Turin – aristocratic, well educated, left-leaning politically, very urban and urbane. This tiny dusty town shocks him, both its poverty and its class structure. (Source)
Il Virginian era un piroscafo. Negli anni tra le due guerre faceva la spola tra Europa e America, con il suo carico di miliardari, di emigranti e di gente qualsiasi. Dicono che sul Virginian si esibisse ogni sera un pianista straordinario, dalla tecnica strabiliante, capace di suonare una musica mai sentita prima, meravigliosa. Dicono che la sua storia fosse pazzesca, che fosse nato su quella nave e che da lì non fosse mai sceso. Dicono che nessuno sapesse il perché.
lessDuring the course of these stories Calvino toys with continuous creation, the transformation of matter, and the expanding and contracting reaches of space and time. He... more
All he knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley - a great big swollen spoiled bully. Harry’s room is a tiny closet at the foot of the stairs, and he hasn’t had a birthday party in eleven years.
But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an... more
Joe Lycettguys i just read this book called harry potter well worth checking out it’s about a really interesting magic lad (Source)
An explorer of identity and its mysteries, a connoisseur of black humor,... more
Il narratore rievoca la storia dello zio, Medardo di Torralba, che, combattendo in Boemia contro i Turchi, è tagliato a metà da un colpo di cannone. Le due parti del corpo, perfettamente conservate, mostrano diversi caratteri: la prima metà mostra un'indole crudele, infierisce sui sudditi e insidia la bella Pamela, mentre l'altra metà, quella buona, si prodiga per riparare ai misfatti dell'altra e chiede in sposa... more
The hottest summer of the twentieth century. A tiny community of five houses in the middle of wheat fields. While the adults shelter indoors, six children venture out on their bikes across the scorched, deserted countryside.
In the midst of that sea of golden wheat, nine year-old Michele Amitrano discovers a secret so momentous, so... more
Ryan HolidayEqually allegorical, I read The Little Prince for the first time which for some reason I’d never been exposed to before. If you’re in the same boat, read it. It’s short but great. (Source)
Brandon Stanton[Brandon Stanton recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)
Karen PaolilloThe Little Prince has influenced me in every aspect of my life, from my own emotions and how I feel inwardly, to how I like to view our planet. (Source)
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Simon MawerThis is one of the greatest books that I know. It is beautifully done. There is an anonymous narrator who is clearly based on Giorgio Bassani’s own experiences. Again, it is an oblique look at the fate of European Jews. (Source)
Sarah Chihaya and Merve EmreIt’s the most suffocating book I can think of—an incredibly claustrophobic novel in that it’s literally about a woman who’s trapped in her apartment with her children and her dying German shepherd … It’s the fictional exercise of being trapped in your home, the self you’ve constituted. It’s the opposite of home invasion; it’s the opposite of how most fiction works. There’s something so... (Source)
A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one—it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both "primes," are misfits who seem destined to be alone. Haunted by childhood tragedies that mark their lives, they cannot reach out to anyone else. When Alice and Mattia meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit.
But the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles... more
First performed in 1923, this intellectual comedy introduces six individuals to a stage where a company of actors has assembled for a rehearsal. Claiming to be the incomplete, unused creations of an author's... more
Vitangelo Moscarda ``loses his reality'' when his wife cavalierly informs him that his nose tilts to the right; suddenly he realizes that ``for others I was not what till now, privately, I had imagined myself to be,'' and that, consequently, his identity is evanescent, based purely on the shifting perceptions of those around him. Thus he is simultaneously without a... more
The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son... more
David GrossmanMorante opposes the anonymity of war—the war of masses, states, armies, troops and she commits us to the individual (Source)
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Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and... more
Nicky CullenThat is such a tough question. I'm going to say The Godfather because I couldn't stop until it was finished. (Source)
Michal PtacekMy most favourite book is Godfather by Mario Puzo. I think it is even slightly more interesting and better than a movie which is almost perfect. Total masterpiece :) (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Italian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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Tim ParksPavese was a very difficult young man with all kinds of problems – above all, problems with women. He never really had a happy relationship with a woman. His notebooks are full of discussion about premature ejaculation and the difficulty of ever having a mature relationship with anybody. He became quite an important translator very early on in his life. He translated [James Joyce’s] A Portrait of... (Source)
The Shape of Water is the first in Andrea Camilleri's wry, brilliantly compelling Sicilian crime series, featuring Inspector Montalbano.
The goats of Vigàta once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavour. But their discreet trade is upset when two employees of the Splendour Refuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer Silvio Luparello, one of the local movers and shakers, apparently deceased in flagrante at the Pasture. The coroner's verdict is...
moreGavin KnightIt’s true that the numbers killed by the Camorra are so much greater than anything in Britain. Also the way people are killed and disposed of is different and much more brutal. There is also the pervasive influence of the mafia in southern Italy, especially when it comes to the dumping of toxic waste. (Source)
In Ocean Sea, Alessandro Baricco presents a hypnotizing postmodern fable of human malady--psychological, existential, erotic--and the sea as a means of deliverance. At the Almayer Inn, a remote shoreline hotel, an artist dips his brush in a cup of ocean water to paint a portrait of the sea. A scientist pens love letters to a woman he has yet to meet. An adulteress searches for relief from her proclivity to fall in... more
This short, beautifully paced novel... more
Dacia MarainiI canti is a collection of poems with an idea that coincides with my idea of life. In Italy we have many classics which are Catholic, for example Dante, a wonderful poet. But I prefer Leopardi because he doesn’t have this Catholic idea of guilt and punishment. Leopardi doesn’t believe in another world, paradise or hell and he has a deep relationship with nature. One of the most beautiful poems is... (Source)
Ruth Ben-GhiatFamily Lexicon, which is more like a novelized memoir, is a valuable testimony of how private life unfolded during Fascist Italy. (Source)
Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts-a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The... more
Dacia MarainiThis is another wonderful poem. It comes from the legend of the French Knights of the Round Table and it’s all about warriors and wanderers who go walking through woods, crossing rivers, climbing mountains. There is a lot of imagination: flying horses and dragons and miraculous springs. The women are courageous and willing to travel to know the world better. That’s what I like in this epic poem.... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Italian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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Marina WarnerThe literature of working people, the people who the communists wanted to include in culture rather than separate from it, was steeped in the exuberant fairy tale, and Calvino wanted to see that culture recognised. When he looked around he couldn’t see a book that did that and so he decided to do it himself. (Source)
Sarah Chihaya and Merve EmreThe Lost Daughter tells the story of a 50-year-old literature professor named Leda who takes herself on a melancholy beach vacation, where she sees a mother and daughter playing together on the beach. Leda’s own daughters are grown, and she’s struck, instantaneously and illogically, with a kind of jealous attraction to the connection between this mother and daughter. The little girl leaves her... (Source)
Jonathan GloverPrimo Levi’s books all reflect his experiences in Auschwitz. Perhaps because he was a scientist, he wrote with a precision and definiteness, at the opposite pole from rhetoric. This gives his books immense power, as what he describes could only be diminished by any striving for effect. The Drowned and the Saved is his most reflective book on the Nazi genocide and on his own experiences and what... (Source)
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And strike it does. For in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girls' bathroom, and the unwanted attentions of Ron... more
Marcus ChownIt’s a series of short stories, or a novel really. But he’s doing something that no other novelist has ever done. He looks at the history of the universe, the history of life on Earth – all the major milestones – and he makes it human. (Source)
Adam MaloofIn Cosmicomics, Calvino takes huge scientific ideas, transmutes time, and describes spectacular geological and astrophysical processes through the senses of the intrepid protagonist Qfwfq – but with fairy tale mastery instead of Hollywood false realism. (Source)
The place is Rome. The central figure is Michele, a young man in confused but furious rebellion against the emptiness of bourgeois life. His father is dead; his mother, Mariagrazia, desperately clings to her bored lover, Leo; his sister has no hope of... more
The fourth in the internationally bestselling series featuring the irresistible Sicilian detective.
Inspector Salvo Montalbano, with his compelling mix of humor, cynicism, and compassion, has been compared to Georges Simenon's, Dashiel Hammett's, and Raymond... more
Don't have time to read the top Italian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
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And yet . . .
As in all wars, life goes on. The Weasley twins expand their business. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate - and lose a few eyebrows in the process. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Classes are never straightforward, through Harry receives some extraordinary... more
Madhur JaffreyMarcella Hazan takes you by the hand. For example, if you are going to make a risotto she tells you what rice to buy. (Source)
Nigel SlaterIt’s not beautiful writing; I don’t read her for information; I don’t read her for a sense of place. I read Marcella Hazan purely for the way she writes her recipes…. There is no finer recipe writer. Her recipes are concise, they’re clear, they’re unfussy and she never leaves me in any doubt about what I’m supposed to be doing. (Source)
Ruth RogersWhen people come to work at the River Café as a chef we ask them if they have read this, and if they haven’t we ask them to read it. (Source)
In Other Words is at heart a love story—of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. And although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterward, true mastery had always eluded her. So in 2012, seeking full immersion, she decided to move to Rome with her family, for “a trial by fire, a sort of... more
"I love Olly's work - and you will too!" - Barbara Oakley, PhD, Author of New York Times bestseller A Mind for Numbers
Short Stories in Italian for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, and most importantly - enjoyment! Mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories will both entertain you, and give... more
As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his illusions; and the lessons given him... more
Don't have time to read the top Italian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
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The young king of Coroa has never been the type to settle down—that is, until he meets Hollis Brite.
Hollis has grown up at the castle, among the other daughters of nobility who hoped beyond hope that they’d catch the king’s eye. So when King Jameson declares his love for her, Hollis is shocked—and thrilled.
But she soon realizes that along with the extravagant... more
You can work hard on your grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, but being able to communicate naturally isn't easy.
In fact, the toughest part of learning Italian is knowing how to speak like a native.
Most textbooks are made to teach you the traditional rules and structures of a language and are great for getting around the grammar and spelling questions you may have.
However, how many of them provide you the tools... more
Updated to... more
This is a book about the joy of discovery. A playful, entertaining, and mind-bending introduction to modern physics, it's already a major bestseller in Italy and the United Kingdom. Carlo Rovelli offers surprising—and surprisingly easy to grasp—explanations of general relativity, quantum mechanics, elementary particles, gravity, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, and the role humans play in this weird and wonderful world. He takes us to the frontiers of our knowledge: to the most minute... more
Naval RavikantI’ve read that one at least twice. (Source)
No civilization is without a bit of revisionist history: so it was that Virgil picked up the story of Aeneas, which was already floating around at the time, and forged an epic founding myth for Rome. And The Aeneid fit the bill, as it... more
Mark ZuckerbergOh, it’s not a favorite book or anything like that, I just added it because I liked it. I don’t think there’s any real significance to the fact that it’s listed there and other books aren’t. But there are definitely books—like the Aeneid—that I enjoyed reading a lot more. (Source)
Ryan HolidayI made an effort to read some classical poets and playwrights this year. The Aneiad was far and away the most quotable, readable and memorable of all of them. There’s no other way to put: the story is AMAZING. Better than the Odyssey, better than Juvenal’s Satires. Inspiring, beautiful, exciting, and eminently readable, I loved this. I took more notes on it that I have on anything I’ve read in a... (Source)
Ted TurnerWhen I got to college, I was a classics major, and that was mainly the study of Greek - and to a lesser extent Roman - history and culture, and that fascinated me: the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid by Virgil. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Italian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
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Boredom, the story of a failed artist and pampered son of a rich family who becomes dangerously attached to a young model, examines the complex relations between money, sex, and imperiled masculinity. This powerful and disturbing study in the pathology of modern life is one of the masterworks of a writer whom as Anthony Burgess once remarked, was "always trying to get to the... more
Key phrases for use in everyday circumstances, complete with phonetic spelling
An English-Italian and Italian-English dictionary
Tips for small talk and local lingo with Rick's signature sense of humor
A tear-out cheat sheet for continued language... more
Packed with facts, attributions, and entertaining anecdotes about his contemporaries, Giorgio Vasari's collection of biographical accounts also presents a highly influential theory of the development of Renaissance art.
Beginning with Cimabue and Giotto, who represent the infancy of art, Vasari considers the period of youthful vigour, shaped by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and Masaccio, before discussing the mature period of perfection, dominated by the titanic figures of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo.
This specially commissioned translation contains thirty-six of...
moreBlake GopnikWith Vasari, we begin thinking that artistic biography might matter. As much as we may want to resist the notion that biography is central to understanding art, it seems as though it is just inevitable – the life of the artist is an inevitable element in considering the art itself, as Vasari realised early on. (Source)
Kenneth BartlettHe invented art history as we know it…..Much of what we know, especially about the personal lives of the artists, comes from Vasari because there are no other sources. He got it from gossip and hearsay. That is how he did much of his research: by asking people who knew them or by asking somebody whose father had worked with them. (Source)
Kaputt is an insider's dispatch from the world of... more
Don't have time to read the top Italian books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.