MY ITALIAN BOOK CLUB

21 OF MY FAVOURITE BOOKS SET IN ITALY.

While I have been in lockdown in Australia, seemingly a world away from the trials and tribulations rocking my beloved adopted country of Italy, I got to thinking about all the wonderful books I have read over the years that feature Bella Italia. So in response to those thoughts, I decided to create a list of my top 21 books and share it with you. I’ve tried to include something for everyone, from a classic Shakespearean play to a laugh-out-loud trilogy by James Hamilton-Person and almost everything in-between. These books take you on an unforgettable journey through many of the fascinating places Italy has to offer and can be enjoyed from the comfort of your own home. Read on…..

1. Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson.

Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany, where he whiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions, including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur of the book’s title. Gerald’s idyll is shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former Soviet republic. A series of hilarious misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity.

2. Amazing Disgrace by James Hamilton-Paterson.

Set both in Tuscany and in the trendy haunts of London, this is the hilarious sequel to Cooking with Fernet Branca. The inimitable Gerald Samper is back, with his musings on the absurdities of modern life and his entertaining asides, during which he comments on everything from publishing to penile implants, celebrity sportswomen to Australian media moguls. Plus his marvelously eccentric recipes. A smart literary romp featuring a cavalcade of misadventures and memorable characters.

3. Rancid Pansies by James Hamilton-Paterson.

When we last saw our hero, he had taken to his bed in England, his beloved home in Tuscany having inexplicably capsized into a ravine. As Rancid Pansies opens, Samper is recuperating in Sussex at the home of the famous conductor Max Christ when he learns that the film rights to his book on Millie Cleat—the one-armed yachtswoman whose inadvertent hari-kari, televised on Christmas day, gave his book an enormous boost—have been sold. 

4. A Room with a View by E.M Forster.

Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, the curious Mr. Emerson, and, most of all, his passionate son George.
Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé, Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?

5. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim.

A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed. The women at the center of The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon. The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy. Now, if the same transformation can be worked on their husbands and lovers, the enchantment will be complete.

5. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield—the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semi-autobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right.

6. Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.

Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers. In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley, a young striver who recently arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded “sissy” by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal but grows enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante. 

7. Agostino by Alberto Moravia.

Thirteen-year-old Agostino is spending the summer at a Tuscan seaside resort with his beautiful widowed mother. When she takes up with a cocksure new companion, Agostino, feeling ignored and unloved, begins hanging around with a group of local young toughs. Though repelled by their squalor and brutality and repeatedly humiliated for his weakness and ignorance when it comes to women and sex, the boy is increasingly masochistically drawn to the gang and its rough games. He finds himself unable to make sense of his troubled feelings. Hoping to be full of manly calm, he is instead beset by guilty curiosity and an urgent desire to sever, at any cost, the thread of troubled sensuality that binds him to his mother. 
Alberto Moravia’s classic, startling portrait of innocence lost was written in 1942 but rejected by Fascist censors and not published until 1944, when it became a best seller and secured the author the first literary prize of his career. Revived here in a new translation by Michael F. Moore, Agostino is poised to captivate a twenty-first-century audience.

8. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

The Leopard is the story of a decadent and dying aristocracy threatened by the forces of revolution and democracy. Set against the political upheavals of Italy in the 1860s, it focuses on Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian prince of immense sensual appetites, wealth, and great personal magnetism. Around this powerful figure swirls a glittering array of characters: a Bourbon king, liberals and pseudo-liberals, peasants, and millionaires.

9. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, and the empirical insights of Roger Bacon—all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where “the most interesting things happen at night.

10. Letters from the Palazzo Barbaro by Henry James.

Henry James first came to Venice as a tourist and instantly fell in love with the city, particularly with the splendid Palazzo Barbaro, home of the expatriate American Curtis family. This selection of letters covers the period 1869–1907 and provides a unique record of the life and work of this great writer.

11. The Blind Contessa’s New Machine by Carey Wallace.

In the early 1800s, a young Italian contessa, Carolina Fantoni, realizes she is going blind shortly before she marries the town’s most sought-after bachelor. Her parents don’t believe her, nor does her fiancé. The only ones who understand are the eccentric local inventor and her longtime companion, Turri. When her eyesight dims forever, Carolina can no longer see her beloved lake or the rich hues of her own dresses. But as darkness erases her world, she discovers one place she can still see—in her dreams. Carolina creates a vivid dreaming life in which she can not only see but also fly, exploring lands she had never known. Based on the true story of a nineteenth-century inventor and his innovative contraption, The Blind Contessa’s New Machine is an enchanting confection of love and the triumph of the imagination.

12. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.

A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as they are transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists. In fact, all of her Neapolitan Novels are wonderful I just chose My Brilliant Friend, as it is the first in the series. Also, the HBO television series is excellent.

13. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.
And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio’s back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.
What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the star-struck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist; and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. 
Gloriously inventive and constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams

14. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordino.

A prime number is a lonely thing. It can only be divided by itself or by one, and it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia are both “primes”—misfits haunted by early tragedies. When the two meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit. Years later, a chance encounter reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to surface. But can two prime numbers ever find a way to be together? A brilliantly conceived and elegantly written debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and what it means to be human.

15. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.

In this lively comedy of love and money in sixteenth-century Venice, Bassanio wants to impress the wealthy heiress Portia but lacks the necessary funds. He turns to his merchant friend, Antonio, who is forced to borrow from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. When Antonio’s business falters, repayment becomes impossible, and by the terms of the loan agreement, Shylock is able to demand a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Portia cleverly intervenes, and all ends well.

16. The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club by Marlena de Blasi.                 

Every month on a Thursday evening, a group of four Italian rural women gather in a derelict stone house in the hills above Italy’s Orvieto. There, along with their friend, Marlena, they cook, sit down to a beautiful supper, drink their beloved local wines, and talk. Here, surrounded by candlelight, good food, and friendship, they tell their life stories of loves lost and found, of aging and abandonment, of mafia grudges and family feuds, and of ingredients and recipes whose secrets have been passed down through the generations. Around this table, these five friends share their food and all that life has offered them—the good and the bad.

17. My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith.

When writer Paul Stewart heads to the idyllic Italian town of Montalcino to finish his already late book, it seems like the perfect escape from stressful city life. Upon landing, however, things quickly take a turn for the worse when he discovers his hired car is nowhere to be found. With no record of any reservations and no other cars available, it looks like Paul is stuck at the airport. That is, until an enterprising stranger offers him an unexpected alternative. While there may be no cars available, there is something else on offer: a bulldozer. With little choice in the matter, Paul accepts, and so begins a series of laugh-out-loud adventures through the Italian countryside, following in the wake of Paul and his Italian Bulldozer. A story of unexpected circumstances and a lesson in making the best of what you have, My Italian Bulldozer is a warm weekend read guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

18. Italian Neighbors by Tim Parks.

In this deliciously seductive account of an Italian neighborhood with a statue of the Virgin at one end of the street, a derelict bottle factory at the other, and a wealth of exotic flora and fauna in between, acclaimed novelist Tim Parks celebrates ten years of living with his wife, Rita, in Verona, Italy. Via Colombre, the main street in a village just outside Verona, offers an exemplary hodgepodge of all that is new and old in the Bel Paese, a point of collision between invading suburbia and diehard peasant tradition in a sometimes madcap, sometimes romantic, always mixed-up world of creeping vines, stuccoed walls, shotguns, security cameras, hypochondria, and expensive sports cars.

19. The Italians by John Hooper.

A vivid and surprising portrait of the Italian people from an admired foreign correspondent. Discover how a nation that spawned the Renaissance also produced the Mafia. And why does Italian have twelve words for coat hanger but none for hangover?
John Hooper’s entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Fifteen years as a foreign correspondent based in Rome have sharpened Hooper’s observations, and he looks at the facts that lie behind the stereotypes, shedding new light on everything from the Italians’ bewildering politics to their love of life and beauty. Hooper persuasively demonstrates the impact of geography, history, and tradition on many aspects of Italian life, including football and Freemasonry, sex, food, and opera. Brimming with the kind of fascinating—and often hilarious—insights unavailable in guidebooks, The Italians will surprise even the most die-hard Italianophile

20. My House in Umbria by William Trevor.

Mrs. Emily Delahunty, a mysterious and not entirely trustworthy former madam, quietly runs a pensione in the Italian countryside and writes romance novels while she muses on her checkered past. Then one day her world is changed forever as the train she is riding in is blown up by terrorists. Taken to a local hospital to recuperate, she befriends the other survivors—an elderly English general, an American child, and a German boy—and takes them all to convalesce at her villa, with unforeseen results. I do love the film version as well; it’s Maggie Smith at her finest.

21. Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman.

Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks’ duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime.

All the above-mentioned titles have been linked to Goodreads.com where you can find your local booksellers online. Remember to support your smaller independent bookstores, particularly at this time when small businesses are suffering.

Well, I hope within this list you have found something new to read that ‘tickles your fancy’ or perhaps rediscovered an old classic you may have forgotten about. Take the time while you have it to lose yourself in the fantasy of a good book, and in particular one that transports you back into the world we used to know in BC—Before Covid—in wonderful Bella Italia.

Do let me know if I’ve missed any other great books set in Italy. I’d love to hear from you and perhaps add it to my next list.