Books set in Italy (81)


Find more books set in Italy by genre:
51.

The Betrothed : I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: Europe / Italy flag Italy
Description:
“The great plague novel.” —The New Yorker Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters—the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister "Unnamed"—in their struggle to be reunited. A vigorous portrayal of enduring passion, The Betrothed... continue

52.

The Birth of Venus : A Novel by Sarah Dunant EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
Turning fifteen in Renaissance Florence, Alessandra Cecchi becomes intoxicated with the works of a young painter whom her father has brought to the city to decorate the family's Florentine palazzo.


54.

The Chimera by Sebastiano Vassalli EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / Italy flag Italy
Description:
Offering a study of hypocrisy and evil, a comic novel of religious corruption and witchcraft in seventeenth-century Italy chronicles the fate of a young orphan named Antonia, who is burned at the stake in the town of Novara in 1610.

55.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas EN

Rating: 5 (15 votes)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
Translated with an Introduction by Robin Buss

56.

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / Italy flag Italy
Description:
"This novel that shocked audiences in Europe with its unsentimental and unyielding depiction of motherhood, marriage and solitude, tells the story of one woman's headlong descent into what she calls an "absence of sense" after being abandoned by her husband. Olga's "days of abandonment" become a desperate, dangerous freefall into the darkest places of the soul as she roams the empty streets of a city that she has never learned to love. When she finds herself trapped inside the four walls of her apartment in the middle of a summer heat wave, Olga is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential ... continue

57.

The Devil's Grip : A Novel by Lina Wolff EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / Sweden flag Sweden
Description:
Wickedly dark with a mystical edge, this story of an Italian love affair gone bad captures the irresistible pull of toxic relationships—from the acclaimed author of Carnality. A woman arrives in Florence, overwhelmed by the strange, warm city so different from her home. Amidst the Renaissance architecture and amorous couples, she finds an unexpected love of her own. With his dark, ugly looks, people might stop and stare, wondering what someone like her was doing with someone like him. But he’s the Mickey to her Minnie, and she can fix him—they can fix each other. She feels bound to him, body a... continue

58.

The Divine Comedy : Volume 1: Inferno by Dante Alighieri EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / Italy flag Italy
Description:
An acclaimed translation of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno that retains all the style, power and meaning of the original A Penguin Classic This vigorous translation of Inferno preserves Dante's simple, natural style, and captures the swift movement of the original Italian verse. Mark Musa's blank verse rendition of the poet's journey through the circles of hell recreates for the modern reader the rich meanings that Dante's poem had for his contemporaries. Musa's introduction and commentaries on each of the cantos brilliantly illuminate the text. For more than seventy yea... continue

59.

The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / Italy flag Italy
Description:
Levi wrote of the moral collapse that occurred in Auschwitz and the fallibility of human memory that allows such atrocities to recur. Levi's last book published before his death in 1987.

60.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje EN

Rating: 3 (4 votes)
Country: Asia / Sri Lanka flag Sri Lanka
Description:
BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Warlight traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II. “A rare spellbinding web of dreams.” —Time The nurse Hana, exhausted by death, obsessively tends to her last surviving patient. Caravaggio, the thief, tries to reimagine who he is, now that his hands are hopelessly maimed. The Indian sapper Kip searches for hidden bombs in a landscape where nothing is safe but himself. And at the center of his labyrinth lies the English patient, nameless and hideously burned, a ma... continue