Fifty Favorite Works of Italian Literature

(in alphabetical order, with no more five than books per author, because otherwise . . . *)

 

  1. The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

  2. All the Errors by Giorgio Manganelli

  3. An Autumn Story by Tomasso Landolfi

  4. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

  5. The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily by Dino Buzzati

  6. Blind Argus by Gesualdo Bufalino

  7. Brief Lives of Idiots by Ermanno Cavazzoni

  8. The Castle of Fratta by Ippolito Nievo

  9. Catastrophe and Other Stories by Dino Buzzati

  10. Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli

  11. Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini

  12. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

  13. Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini

  14. The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia

  15. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

  16. A Devil Comes to Town by Paolo Maurensig

  17. Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli

  18. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

  19. The Faithful Lover by Massimo Bontempelli

  20. The Giro d’Italia: Coppi versus Bartali at the 1949 Tour of Italy by Dino Buzzati

  21. Gogol’s Wife and Other Stories by Tomasso Landolfi

  22. The Iguana by Anna Maria Ortese

  23. Ithaca Forever by Luigi Malerba

  24. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

  25. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  26. Lies of the Night by Gesualdo Bufalino

  27. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

  28. A Love Affair by Dino Buzzati

  29. Malacqua: Four Days of Rain in the City of Naples, Waiting for the Occurrence of an Extraordinary Event by Nicola Pugliese

  30. Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino

  31. The Parrots by Filippo Bologna

  32. The Plague Sower by Gesualdo Bufalino

  33. Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati

  34. The Professor and the Siren by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  35. The Serpent by Luigi Malerba

  36. “The Signorina” and Other Stories by Anna Banti

  37. Silk by Alessandro Baricco

  38. Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino

  39. Stories with Pictures by Antonio Tabucchi

  40. Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy

  41. The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

  42. The Temple of Iconoclasts by J. Rodolfo Wilcock

  43. To Those Gods Beyond by Giorgio Manganelli

  44. A Tournament of Misfits: Tall Tales and Short by Aldo Palazzeschi

  45. The Toy Catalogue by Sandra Petrignani

  46. The Transgressionists and Other Disquieting Works: Five Tales of Weird Fiction by Giorgio de Maria

  47. The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria

  48. The Voice of the Moon by Ermanno Cavazzoni

  49. What Is This Buzzing, Do You Hear It Too? by Luigi Malerba

  50. You, Bleeding Childhood by Michele Mari

* otherwise = Calvino

— October 9, 2025


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