The Letter Carrier
Italy

The Letter Carrier

by Francesca Giannone

Identity & Belonging Historical Fiction Romance Fiction 2025

Summary

In June 1934, Anna arrives with her husband, Carlo, in the small southern Italian village of Lizzanello, in the sun-soaked region of Salento. An outsider from northern Italy, she stands apart from the village women: she reads unconventional books, refuses to follow traditional expectations, and believes women deserve the same rights as men. When the local post office begins hiring, Anna seizes the opportunity to become the village’s first female letter carrier—a decision that challenges deeply rooted social conventions.

As she delivers letters carrying news of love, separation, longing, and loss, Anna gradually becomes an essential thread connecting the community. Yet beneath the village’s familiar rhythms lie forbidden desires, old resentments, and family secrets that threaten to change several lives forever. Inspired by the author’s own great-grandmother, this sweeping historical novel explores a woman’s determination to shape her own destiny in a world that expects her to conform.

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Country
Italy
Europe
About the author
Francesca Giannone
Francesca Giannone

Francesca Giannone is an Italian novelist born in 1982 in Lecce, in the southern Italian region of Apulia. She graduated in communication science and studied filmmaking at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, one of Europe’s oldest film schools. Before becoming widely known as a novelist, she published short stories in literary magazines and developed an interest in painting and storytelling. Her debut novel, The Letter Carrier (La portalettere), was published in Italy in 2023. Inspired in part by the story of her great-grandmother, the book became a major bestseller and won the prestigious Premio Bancarella in 2023. Giannone’s fiction often explores family relationships, women’s lives, and the tensions between individual desires and social expectations. She currently lives in Milan, although she remains deeply connected to her hometown of Lizzanello in Salento, where The Letter Carrier is set.

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Details
Published
2025
Author
Francesca Giannone