Books from Italy

If on a winter’s night a traveler is an experimental novel that places the reader at the centre of the story. It begins with a reader attempting to enjoy a new book by Italo Calvino, only to discover that the text is incomplete. As the reader searches for the missing continuation, they encounter a series of other novels, each beginning in a different literary style but ending abruptly. Along the way, the reader becomes involved with Ludmilla, another reader who shares the desire to discover how the stories conclude. Calvino turns the act of reading into an adventure, examining the relationship between authors, readers, and the books they create together. The novel explores curiosity, interpretation, and the human desire for narrative closure, playfully questioning whether a story’s meaning lies in its ending, its beginning, or the experience of reading itself.

Jess Capodimonte Baratta has spent much of her life putting everyone else first. Recently divorced, she retreats to her parents’ basement in Lake Como, New Jersey, where family obligations and Sunday dinners leave little room for her own ambitions. A talented draftswoman working in her uncle’s marble business, Jess has more potential than she realizes—but an unexpected family loss brings buried secrets to light and forces her to question everything she thought she knew about the people closest to her. Determined to reclaim her future, Jess travels to her ancestral home in Carrara, Italy, where the marble mountains of Tuscany and the vibrant streets of Milan offer the possibility of a fresh start. As she explores her family’s past and meets Angelo Strazza, an artist who works in gold, Jess begins to discover her own creative gifts and a new sense of belonging. Blending romance, family drama, and Italian-American heritage, this warm, spirited novel explores the courage it takes to reinvent yourself and build a life on your own terms.

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.

In One, None, and a Hundred Grand, Vitangelo Moscarda discovers that his wife sees his nose as slightly crooked, a detail he has never noticed himself. This seemingly trivial observation triggers an existential crisis as he realizes that everyone perceives him differently, creating countless versions of his identity. As he attempts to escape these conflicting images, he begins to question the nature of selfhood, reality, and social identity. Through absurdity and philosophical reflection, Pirandello explores the instability of personal identity and the impossibility of truly knowing oneself through the eyes of others.

Tangerinn follows Mina, a thirty-year-old woman who has built a carefully controlled life in London in an attempt to escape her past. When her Moroccan-born father, Omar, dies unexpectedly, she returns to her childhood home in Calabria, southern Italy, intending to attend his funeral. Instead, she finds herself staying longer than planned, drawn back into the family and community she once left behind. Omar ran a small beach bar called the Tangerinn, a gathering place for migrants and outsiders who struggled to find acceptance in their new home. As Mina reconnects with the people who knew her father, she begins to uncover the complexities of his past and question how well she truly understood him. Her journey becomes an exploration of the parallels between their lives: both left home in search of something better, yet neither could entirely escape the pull of their origins. Moving between Italy, Morocco, and London, Anechoum explores migration, family inheritance, cultural identity, and the elusive meaning of belonging. The novel asks whether we can ever fully escape our past or whether understanding where we come from is essential to discovering who we are.