Fifty Favorite Works of Italian Literature
(in alphabetical order, with no more than five books per author, because otherwise . . . *)
- The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi 
- All the Errors by Giorgio Manganelli 
- The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino 
- The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily by Dino Buzzati 
- Blind Argus by Gesualdo Bufalino 
- Brief Lives of Idiots by Ermanno Cavazzoni 
- The Castle of Fratta by Ippolito Nievo 
- Catastrophe and Other Stories by Dino Buzzati 
- Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli 
- Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini 
- Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino 
- Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini 
- The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia 
- The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante 
- A Devil Comes to Town by Paolo Maurensig 
- Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli 
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri 
- The Faithful Lover by Massimo Bontempelli 
- The Giro d’Italia: Coppi versus Bartali at the 1949 Tour of Italy by Dino Buzzati 
- Gogol’s Wife and Other Stories by Tomasso Landolfi 
- The Iguana by Anna Maria Ortese 
- Ithaca Forever by Luigi Malerba 
- Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli 
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 
- Lies of the Night by Gesualdo Bufalino 
- The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante 
- A Love Affair by Dino Buzzati 
- Malacqua: Four Days of Rain in the City of Naples, Waiting for the Occurrence of an Extraordinary Event by Nicola Pugliese 
- Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino 
- The Parrots by Filippo Bologna 
- The Plague Sower by Gesualdo Bufalino 
- Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati 
- The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 
- The Serpent by Luigi Malerba 
- “The Signorina” and Other Stories by Anna Banti 
- Silk by Alessandro Baricco 
- Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino 
- Stories with Pictures by Antonio Tabucchi 
- Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy 
- The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati 
- The Temple of Iconoclasts by J. Rodolfo Wilcock 
- To Those Gods Beyond by Giorgio Manganelli 
- A Tournament of Misfits: Tall Tales and Short by Aldo Palazzeschi 
- The Toy Catalogue by Sandra Petrignani 
- The Transgressionists and Other Disquieting Works: Five Tales of Weird Fiction by Giorgio de Maria 
- The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria 
- The Voice of the Moon by Ermanno Cavazzoni 
- What Is This Buzzing, Do You Hear It Too? by Luigi Malerba 
- You, Bleeding Childhood by Michele Mari 
- You’re An Animal, Viskovitz! by Alessandro Boffa 
* otherwise = Calvino
— October 9, 2025