Babelguides: Books

On this page is a selection of recommended books. To browse by language or conduct a search, use the links on the left.

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The Fall [Buy Direct]

by Albert Camus

The Outsider [Buy Direct]

by Albert Camus

Erotic Tales [Buy Direct]

by Alberto Moravia
Translated by T Parks
Original title: La cosa ed altri racconti

Written late in his career (late in his life in fact), Moravia’s Erotic Tales seem at first to be exercises in writing that use the erotic as a peg — the exercises of an experienced master-narrator, playfully executed and highly readable. Some of the stories, though, (more...)

The Conformist [Buy Direct]

by Alberto Moravia
Translated by Angus Davidson
Original title: Il conformista

After a dark and troubled event in his childhood, a collision between sexuality and violence, the protagonist of The Conformist Marcello Clerici wants to have a perfectly normal adult life, one in keeping with established morality. His aim is to become like others, (more...)

The Iguana [Buy Direct]

by Anna-Maria Ortese
Translated by Henry Martin
Original title: L’iguana

A Count falls for a charming young reptile who lives on an island lost off the Portuguese coast. In its writing and conception the book belongs to the fabulous-modernist mode of Italian literature familiar to readers of Calvino. (more...)

The Way Back [Buy Direct]

by Enrico Palandri
Translated by S Hood
Original title: La via del ritorno

A moving, relevant and very European book which, as its title suggests, is about a person trying to link up moments of a past scattered by history. The past in question is that of a young man growing up in the late 1960s in a hyper-politicised Italy. (more...)

The Abecedary [Buy Direct]

by Goffredo Parise
Translated by J Marcus
Original title: Il silibario

The Moon and the Bonfire [Buy Direct]

by Cesare Pavese
Translated by Louise Sinclair
Original title: La luna e il falò

Set in an impoverished corner of the Piedmontese countryside, this is the Pastorale of a writer who spent most of his adult life in industrial Turin. (more...)

Among Women Only [Buy Direct]

by Cesare Pavese
Translated by D.D. Paige
Original title: Tra donne sole

In a postwar Turin portrayed as a value-less wasteland of the rich, a hard-bitten youngish woman listlessly socialises with the local gilded youth. There’s a circuit of parties, (more...)

The Political Prisoner

by Cesare Pavese
Translated by W.J. Strachan
Original title: Il carcere

The Toy Catalogue [Buy Direct]

by Sandra Petrignani
Translated by Ray Lombardo
Original title: Il catalogo dei giocattoli

Born in 1952, Sandra Petrignani is one of Italy’s ‘giovani scrittori’ or young writers of the 1980s and 1990s, many of whom were originally promoted by Rome’s adventurous Theoria publishing house and now write for the Milanese literary magazine Panta. (more...)

The Late Mattia Pascal [Buy Direct]

by Luigi Pirandello
Translated by William Weaver
Original title: Il fù Mattia Pascal

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