**BUSTLE BEST BOOK OF THE WEEK PICKNAMED A BOOKSHOP.ORG RECOMMENDED READING OF THE SEASONIn this charming, deeply atmospheric novel set against the Amalfi Coast of the 1950s, two women form an intense and lasting friendship that embodies the paradoxes of Italian society.**Inspired by her own adventurous, unconventional life, actress and writer Goliarda Sapienza’s recently rediscovered novel takes the reader to the sun-drenched town of Positano in southern It...

**A breathtakingly beautiful novel about the first 4 years and last 4 months of a great love, by a “lacerating, luminous” Italian author (Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Interpreter of Maladies)Perfect for fans of short, razor-sharp modern literary classics like Annie Ernaux and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking**Upon the death of her husband, Innocenzo Monti, Lalla Romano sought to distil the essence of their long life together. The result was In Fa...

A lonely little boy's unlikely friendship with his grandparents' grizzled old groundskeeper leads him down the rabbit hole from a life lived solely in books to a wonderful and terrifying hell of long-buried secrets, shadowy partisans, murdered Nazis, thefts, lies, doppelgängers, bloodthirsty slugs, and the unquiet dead.

**“I was struck straightaway by the singular force of her taut, meditative, sorrowful writing.” -- Jhumpa LahiriA diamond-sharp, Italian classic about the mysterious relationships between two partisan couples in German-occupied Italy in the wintry mountains of PiemonteThis hauntingly beautiful, sharply modern novel of WWII is perfect for fans of Tove Ditlevsen, Rachel Cusk, and Lucia Berlin**Translated into English for the first time, A Silence Shared is a ...

Long before the latest vogue for autofiction, Michele Mari, one of Italy's most beloved authors, cast his mind back to the days of his own childhood, and found it crawling with monsters. Raised on comic books and science fiction, the young Mari constructed an alternate universe for himself untouched by uncomprehending grownups or sadistic peers. Compared to the horrors of real life, Long John Silver and Cthulhu made for positively cuddly company; but little boys raised by beasts may well g...

In this charming, deeply atmospheric novel set against the Amalfi Coast of the 1950s, two women form an intense and lasting friendship that embodies the paradoxes of Italian society.Inspired by her own adventurous, unconventional life, actress and writer Goliarda Sapienza's recently rediscovered novel takes the listener to the sun-drenched town of Positano in southern Italy. There, while working on a film, Goliarda encounters the captivating Erica, a beautiful wido...

A dazzling novel of one of America’s most celebrated photographers, Dorothea Lange, exploring the wild years in San Francisco that awakened her career-defining grit, compassion, and daring.“Jasmin Darznik expertly delivers an intriguing glimpse into the woman behind those unforgettable photographs of the Great Depression, and their impact on humanity.”—Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile ThingsIn this novel ...

A close-knit family resists the rise of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy in this WW2 historical fiction classic that blends family memoir with fiction—one of the most famous European post-war novels of all time.“A glowing light of Italian literature.” —The New York Times“Life-changingly good.” —ElleAn Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, com...

Secrecy and Silence are second nature to Marcello Clerici, the hero of The Conformist, a book which made Alberto Moravia one of the world's most read postwar writers. Clerici is a man with everything under control - a wife who loves him, colleagues who respect him, the hidden power that comes with his secret work for the Italian political police during the Mussolini years. But then he is assigned to kill his former professor, now in exile, to demonstrate his loyalty to the Fascist...

**An NPR Best Book of the YearVulture • “15 Must-Read Translated Books From the Past 5 Years”Written during the height of the 1970s Italian domestic terror, a cult novel, with distinct echoes of Lovecraft and Borges, makes its English-language debut.**In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create "the Library," a space where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in "dialogues across the e...

The seventh Commissario Ricciardi historical mystery is "an intricately layered whodunit set in Fascist Naples . . . A richly textured story" ( Kirkus Reviews).In the middle of a summer heat wave, as Naples prepares for one of its most important holy days, a renowned surgeon falls to his death from the window of his office. For Commissario Ricciardi and Brigadier Maione it is the beginning of an investigation that will bring them into contact with the most...

Siena seems at first glance a typical Italian city: within its venerable medieval walls the citizens sport designer clothes, wield digital phones, and prize their dazzling local cuisine. But unlike neighboring Florence, Siena is still deeply rooted in ancient traditions—chiefly the spectacular Palio, in which seventeen independent societies known as contrade vie for bragging rights in an annual bareback horse race around the central piazza.Into this strange, closed world s...