If you’re anything like the bookish team here at Il Globo, one of your resolutions for 2023 is undoubtedly to read more. Or, perhaps you’re looking to delve deeper into the rich art and culture of your tricolour roots. If this sounds about right ― look no further!

While most of us encounter Italian literary greats of the likes of Dante and Petrarch at some point in our schooling, outside of a niche academic context, contemporary Australian readers are often less likely to come across Italian authors, even those who are household names in their homeland.

The recent success of pseudonymous novelist Elena Ferrante, whose Neapolitan Quartet featuring My Brilliant Friend has become an international best-seller over the past decade, even garnering a small screen adaptation produced by HBO and RAI Italia, has brought to light a cultural appetite in English-speaking countries for storytelling that presents to us cultural perspectives diverse to our own, yet resonates because of universal, deeply human themes.

So sit back, relax ― dust off the bifocals if you need to ― and get ready to lose yourself in the prosaic mastery of some Italian literary icons, past and present. Happy reading!

'The Lying Life of Adults' by Elena Ferrante

While the whole world has already fallen in love with Ferrante’s aforementioned Naples-set quartet following best friends Lina and Lenu, her most recent novel, The Lying Life of Adults, which has been adapted for TV by Netflix in a six-part series which was released just this week, is also a must-read. Picking up on the quartet’s themes, the novel follows protagonist Giovanna’s coming of age during the 1990s, as she struggles to forge her identity in a Naples divided by class ― torn between the refined posturing of the high-quarters where she has grown up, and the scintillating grittiness of the low-quarters, where her fierce yet intriguing working class aunt Vittoria lives.

'If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller' by Italo Calvino

This renowned experimental postmodern text reveals itself to be not one novel, but ten; each with a different plot, style, atmosphere, and narrator ― and each are interrupted at a moment of utmost suspense. Together, these disparate tales tangle to form a labyrinthine work. Utilising shifting structures, a succession of stories, and alternating viewpoints, this novel explores the nature of change, fate, and chance, as well as the muddy boundaries between fiction and reality. It’s no beach read, but well worth it for those who are game.

'The Florios of Sicily' by Stefania Auci

This grand, sweeping international bestseller is based on the true history of the so-called uncrowned kings of Sicily; the dark secrets, lovers and betrayals, and brutal acts of revenge that defined the Florio family’s century of influence. The novel follows the Florios from their humble beginnings as impoverished shopkeepers all the way though to the terrific reign of their trading empire. At once epic and intimate, this novel examines power, passion, revenge, the rise and fall of a family, and taps into the universal desire to transgress one’s inherited boundaries.

'At the Wolf’s Table' by Rosella Postorino

This Premio Campiello winning historical novel follows protagonist Rosa Sauer, who is conscripted to be one of Hitler's food tasters in 1943: three times a day, she and nine other women go to the dictator's secret headquarters, the ‘Wolf's Lair’, to eat his meals before he does. Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters become increasingly divided and bedlam ensues. This the first novel by Postorino to have an official English translation, and the author derived the story from real-life food-taster Margot-Wölk, having learned about her in 2014 after reading an interview with her in an Italian newspaper.

'I’m staying here' by Marco Balzano

In this quietly devastating work set in the small village of Curon in South Tyrol, a mother recounts her life story to her estranged daughter, detailing her struggles in a community torn between Italian Fascism and German Nazism. Inspired by the haunting image of the belltower rising from Lake Resia, which serves as the book’s cover and is all that remains of the village of Curon today, Balzano’s novel masterfully distils the lives of everyday people unfurling against the backdrop of great moments in history.

'A Girl Returned' by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

Di Pietrantonio’s novel is in good company on this list, having also won the Campiello, and having been translated into English by Ferrante’s right hand woman, American Ann Goldstein. Set against the backdrop of a starkly beautiful Abruzzo, this is a compelling story about mother daughter relationships, familial responsibility, siblings, and care giving, following an unnamed thirteen-year-old girl who is sent away from the family she has always thought of as hers to live with her birth parents. A film adaptation of the novel screened at last year’s St. Ali Italian Film Festival, however it is yet to receive an official Australian release date.