Books about Italy/by Italian writers

[faith]

Last fall I was in Italy and fell in love with the countrey. Now I read one of Frances Mayes books about Toscany, and fell in love with Italy again. Now I would like to read more about Italy (and it doesn't have to be in Frances Mayes/Under the Tuscan Sun -style, if u even are familiar with those books). So could some1 suggest some nice Italian writers? Or books that people from other countries have writen about Italy?

//Laura

[mono]

Hello faith, welcome back! :nod:
When thinking of Italian writers, I have always loved who many people call the "Big 3" - Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy), Petrarch (he wrote amazing sonnets!), and Giovanni Boccaccio (The Decameron - a very amusing and darkly humorous set of stories, taking place during the Black Plague). The Decameron can especially tell a reader of 13th century Italian culture, and I have always thought of it as an Italian version to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Other than that, I know Michelangelo wrote some beautiful sonnets (that I once typed out, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3965), and both Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning (especially her Aurora Leigh) wrote a lot of material while living in Italy, after their escape from England.
Unfortunately, this seems all I can remember right now, but I will post more if anything else comes to mind. Good luck!

[PeterL]

I highly recommend Umberto Eco. He is a great writer.

[faith]

Oh thanx! Off course I know Divine Comedy and Decamerone! Those old classics. Off cource I OUGHT to read them, so maybe I will some day... But I was really looking for something more resent. When did the Brownings live in Italy?

[mono]

Oh thanx! Off course I know Divine Comedy and Decamerone! Those old classics. Off cource I OUGHT to read them, so maybe I will some day... But I was really looking for something more resent. When did the Brownings live in Italy?
I apologize, faith, as I know that I too often stick to the classics. :lol:
The Brownings lived in Italy for some time during the 1800's, and did the greater portions of their poetry - some of the most romantic poetry in existence, in my opinion.
I also know that Ernest Hemingway, during the early to mid 1900's, did a lot of writing in Italy, but how many of his novels have settings there, I have no idea.

[Jack_Aubrey]

Part of A Farewell to Arms takes place in Italy.

[Jay T]

I will second Eco, but another that has to be mentioned (although perhaps his best work doesn't take place in Italy) is Italo Calvino.

Calvino is in my opinion one of the greatest writers ever, absolute must read include Invisible Cities, The Baron in the Trees and the rather mind boggling brilliant If On a Winter's Night a Traveler .

[dejosc]

Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar is a very good book set in italy

[Monica]

Well. I can recommend you Umberto Eco :D His last book, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, speaks about Italian culture a lot. But it's difficult and full of quotations so don't get discouraged :)

[Koa]

posted before it was finished...therefore erased :)

[Koa]

Uhm... I'm thinking of books that are both good novels and can show some of the Italian culture... I wouldn't recommend Dante and all that stuff, I'm so amazed about how people can be so fond of those... for us they are mainly school burdens. (don't get me wrong, I love Petrarca, but I would never read Dante for my own pleasure, and I've always disliked the Decameron).
Someone already mentioned Calvino, and I've never read anything by Eco, but I know they are popular and it should be a good read.

Unfortunately I haven't read many recent books, so I wouldnt know much about stuff set in the contemporary world... I have in mind a few books of the first half of 20th century, which I enjoyed, but I have no clue of how many of those can be found in translation in another language... I'll give you the author and the original title and a tentative translation.

- Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno (Zeno's coscience) - you might have heard of this author as he was a friend of Joyce... Well this book is a classic and another school burden for many, but I absolutely loved it... and I think it's culturally Italian even if actually written and set in the Austrian empire, as at that time that area wasn't Italian yet.
- Luigi Pirandello, Il fu Mattia Pascal, another thing we read for school but is so involving... of course you can try anything by Pirandello, it should be Italian enough *still wondering about translations*
- Cesare Pavese, I have never read his books but I think they have a lot to do with countryside life...
- any book about partisans doing the 2nd world war, I think that makes a big part of our culture... I can recall one called La ragazza di Bube (Bube's girlfriend), whose author at the moment I can't remember.
- Primo Levi, he firstly wrote about concentration camps as he was a survivor, but he wrote many short stories that have a lot to do with daily life, I can remember some about football, which is a national obsession...
- another classic, of the last 19th century, is Giovanni Verga, the 'father' of the Italian naturalism (verismo)... his famous books are I Malavoglia and Mastro Don Gesualdo, again both hated by students... I liked the first one and couldnt bring myself to finish the second one... they are about Sicily at that time, there are also short stories by him
- and last I'd recommend a book which I read by chance and found really strange but interesting, called L'isola di Arturo (Arturo's island) by Elsa Morante... it's not so typical in the sense that not many people really live in such an environment (Capri or a similar southern island) but one thing that impressed me was the description of how women made pasta everyday and maybe for the first time I realised that 100 years ago they couldnt really buy pasta at the supermarket, they had to make it!:D

Ok I'll think of somehting more and better, it's sad how my knowledge of Italian literature is so linked to school memories (I loved Italian lit. at the time), which get more and more vague with time...