English books from Italy
Recommended English books written by authors from Italy (52)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you speak English here are some English books from Italy for the next part of the "Read Around The World Challenge".
1.
A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio EN
Description:
"Told with an immediacy and a rare expressive intensity that has earned it countless adoring readers and one of Italy's most prestigious literary prizes, A Girl Returned marks the English-language debut of an extraordinary literary talent. Set against the stark, beautiful landscape of Abruzzo in central Italy, this is a compelling story about mothers and daughters, about responsibility, siblings, and caregiving. Without warning or explanation, an unnamed 13-year-old girl is sent away from the family she has always thought of as hers to live with her birth family: a large, chaotic assortment of... continue
2.
Accabadora by Michela Murgia EN
Description:
The award winning Accabadora is an exceptional English–language debut, written with intriguing subtlety reflecting a sensual picture of local Italian life and death in villages during the 1950's. A time where family ties and obligations still decide much of life's ebb and flow. A must read for those who love a touch of the unusual. Formerly beautiful and at one time betrothed to a fallen soldier, Bonaria Urrai has a long held covenant with the dead. Midwife to the dying, easing their suffering and sometimes ending it, she is revered and feared in equal measure as the village's Accabadora. When... continue
3.
Description:
Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio.
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Comrade Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi EN
Description:
Number 4 in the Don Camillo series, beloved by 23 million readers. When Peppone loses out to Don Camillo on a matter of conscience he must accept the battling priest's presence among a group of communist activists on a trip he is organising to Mother Russia. Travelling incognito, Don Camillo becomes the life and soul of the Party and picks off his totalitarian comrades one-by-one in a hilarious riot of shrewd manipulation. But then fate intervenes and the travellers discover a surprise common denominator more radical than any political ideology... 'Those who read The Little World of Don Camill... continue
6.
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg EN
Description:
Natalia Ginzburg wrote her masterful, Strega Prize winning novel Family Lexicon while living in London in the 1960s. Homesick for her big, noisy Italian family, she summoned them in this novel, which is a celebration of the routines and rituals, in-jokes and insults and, above all, the repeated sayings that make up every family.
8.
Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg EN
Description:
The hauntingly beautiful epistolary novel from "a glowing light of modern Italian literature" (New York Times Book Review) Longlisted for the PEN Translation Award
9.
I, Francis by Carlo Carretto EN
Description:
Seeks to present the life and teaching of St Francis of Assisi in the form of an imaginary autobiography. At the same time, Carretto takes the liberty of having Francis address the problems of today, a world deeply committed to atheism, but on the brink of radical faith.
10.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, William Weaver EN
Description:
Introduction by Peter Washington; Translation by William Weaver Italo Calvino’s masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book’s central character. Based on a witty analogy between the reader’s desire to finish the story and the lover’s desire to consummate his or her passion, IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book—IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER, by Italo Calvino, of course—are constantly and comically frustrated. ... continue