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?

E M Forster: A Room with a View (and watch the Helen Bonham Carter film version - it’s a forgotten masterpiece)

Aldous Huxley: Those Barren Leaves

D H Lawrence also wrote a lot about Italy, both fiction and non-fiction

Maybe Robert Graves’ I Claudius? (and watch the classic BBC adaptation)

Italian Neighbours by Tim Parks and A Room with a View.

Much, much lighter than other suggestions on here (most of which I love!) but I really enjoyed The Food of Love and The Wedding Officer by Anthony Capella

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

Miss Garnet's Angel by Sally Vickers (my friend went to find the statue in Venice)

Carnevale by MR Lovric

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

Another vote for Still Life by Sarah Winman. One of my favourite books.

F

Another vote for Miss Garnet’s angel by Sally Vickers, set in Venice. I read it there and was thrilled to find a statue of Angel Raphael in a deserted church. It’s a lovely read.

The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone. Fictionalised biography of Michelangelo. Read it many years ago after a trip to Italy. Took bloody weeks to read through.

Loved Still Life and it made me pine for Italy too! Read Room With A View straight after as they go together so well.

Also enjoyed The Three Graces by Amanda Craig, set in Tuscany and any of Donna Leon's Brunetti crime novels in Venice.

There seem to be a lot of murder mysteries set in Bologna if you like them: Tom Benjamin, for example. Eva Sleeps by Francesca Melandri is one of my favourite books - but it is set in the mountains so not on your itinerary!

Naples 44 by Norman Lewis, about the city post- WWII.
I can't believe nobody's mentioned it.
I love Enchanted April, but wouldn't read it on a visit, as it's really a fantasy about Italy and reality isn't like that at all.

The Leopard.

I know I’m very late to this, but have just finished Us by David Nicholls, and enjoyed it so much. Poignant and so funny.

Oh, and Joseph O'Connor, My Father's House and The Ghosts of Rome. WW2, about a secret network who hid people in Nazi-occupied Rome and liberated them. It's going to be a trilogy. These first two are wonderful and I can't wait for the last.