Fifty Favorite Works of Italian Literature

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

 

  1. The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

  2. All the Errors by Giorgio Manganelli

  3. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

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

  5. Blind Argus by Gesualdo Bufalino

  6. Brief Lives of Idiots by Ermanno Cavazzoni

  7. The Castle of Fratta by Ippolito Nievo

  8. Catastrophe and Other Stories by Dino Buzzati

  9. Centuria: One Hundred Ouroboric Novels by Giorgio Manganelli

  10. Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini

  11. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

  12. Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini

  13. The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia

  14. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

  15. A Devil Comes to Town by Paolo Maurensig

  16. Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli

  17. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

  18. The Faithful Lover by Massimo Bontempelli

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

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

  21. The Iguana by Anna Maria Ortese

  22. Ithaca Forever by Luigi Malerba

  23. Interiorae by Gabriella Giandelli

  24. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

  25. Lies of the Night by Gesualdo Bufalino

  26. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

  27. A Love Affair by Dino Buzzati

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

  29. Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino

  30. The Parrots by Filippo Bologna

  31. The Plague Sower by Gesualdo Bufalino

  32. Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati

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

  34. The Serpent by Luigi Malerba

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

  36. Silk by Alessandro Baricco

  37. Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino

  38. Stories with Pictures by Antonio Tabucchi

  39. Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy

  40. The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

  41. The Temple of Iconoclasts by J. Rodolfo Wilcock

  42. To Those Gods Beyond by Giorgio Manganelli

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

  44. The Toy Catalogue by Sandra Petrignani

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

  46. The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria

  47. The Voice of the Moon by Ermanno Cavazzoni

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

  49. You, Bleeding Childhood by Michele Mari

  50. You’re An Animal, Viskovitz! by Alessandro Boffa

* otherwise = Calvino

— October 9, 2025


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