Books to read on a trip through Italy

[TerrorAustralis]

I'm heading to Italy soon and would like to read a few books to give me some local flavour. I tend to read fiction, but don't mind a good memoir. I can do non-ficiton if it's pacy and has a good narrative thread.

I'd prefer to avoid self-indulgent 'I moved to Italy for a year' types of things like Under the Tuscan Sun. I read My Brilliant Friend (first one only) and wasn't keen, so no Elena Ferrante please.

What do you recommend?

Two Women in Rome.

That looks interesting, thanks!

I love capri by Belinda some e is a great ‘light’ read, the last train from Liguria is also v good, set during wwii, there are chunks of the English patient set in Italy - or my all time favourite is A Room with a view where the first part is set in Venice…

🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️ set in Florence…sorry, too early!!

Enchanted April is lovely.
The talented Mr Ripley of course.

Pompeii for political drama and explosions

Letters to Juliet
Under the tuscan sun

A Room With A View, EM Forster
A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales
The Enchanted April, Elizabeth Von Arnim
Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman
anything by Natalia Ginzburg
As Music and Splendour, Kate O’Brien
Daisy Miller, Henry James
Aqua Alta, Donna Leon

Room with a View
my go to read, I must have read it a dozen times. Not just for in Florence but staying in hotels/ being abroad.

Call Me By Your Name

If you fancy a bit of historical fiction:

Jane Ann McLachlan The Girl Who Would Be Queen
Elodie Harper The House with the Golden Door

I just read all the inspector bordelli novels while on holiday for a week in Florence! The covers were not promising and looked a bit "cosy crime", but cosy they are not. Probably because they were written in Italian by an Italian journalist so no romanticised rose tinted stuff.

Another vote for call me by your name - first thing that came to mind when I read this title! Always transports me straight back to Italy when I read it

Where in Italy are you going?

Venice > Verona > Modena (with a pit stop in Bologna) > Florence > Naples > Rome

Thanks for all the recommendations so far! My Kindle will be running hot with downloads.

Carnivale by Michele Lovric - set in Venice and a great read.

Andrea Camillieri

Still Life by Sarah Winman is set partially in Florence. It made me long to go to Italy. Have a great trip!

Also The Floating Book and The Remedy by the same author. And if you want non-fiction - The Pike by Lucy Hallett-Hughes "As well as a riveting portrait of a preposterous character, Hughes-Hallett’s lauded biography of poet and fascist Gabriele D'Annunzio yields illuminating insights into the rise of extremist nationalism in early twentieth-century Europe."

The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier

Loved the Flight of the Falcon and Room with a View. For Venice, how about Susan Hill's Man in the Picture - it's also pretty short.

Oh, I LOVE this novel!

I was going to suggest Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti series; I haven't actually read them myself (still getting round to!) but someone I know recommended them very highly.
If you're into historical fiction/ gruesome intrigue, Blood and Beauty by Sarah Dunant is a corker; it's about the Borgias, basically the original crime family.
There's a sequel too, In the Name of the Family, which I've yet to read.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell is a wonderful portrayal of 16th Century Italy.

The Romantic by Wiliam Boyd

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso