A new collection of short stories by the acclaimed writer who moved to Rome in 2012 and now only writes in Italian. Her many awards include a Pulitzer prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Na... read more
A woman moves through her lonely days in an Italian city: Lahiri's move to Rome a few years ago must inform this sensitive and observant novel. Written in Italian, the text is translated int... read more
Kneale knows the city like few others (viz his Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, pbk £10.99). His writing is also a delight, so his account of lockdown is worth reading.
The fragmented recollections of a handful of survivors of the earthquake that struck the northern Friuli in 1976. Their tiny village high in the Julian Alps, beneath the immense karstic mass... read more
From the Alps to the Adriatic, through Ferrara, Mantova, Parma, Cremona, Pavia and Turin. Those who read Helena Attlee's recent Lev's Violin will know something of its historical use, but no... read more
An English art historian is found dead in a Venetian bookshop after a bad flood. It's in the via dei Assassini, and her death and its consequences are anything but peaceful. Jolly dark stuff... read more
The author went to Venice in 1957, aged 25, to have fun for a season among the rich and glam. Written with 67 years' hindsight, this memoir is a vivid evocation of a vanished era.
This slim volume came out in the autumn and has been picked up so swiftly each time it arrives in the shop that we've hardly been able to keep it in stock...
Howard (1907-1987) served as an intelligence officer in WW2 throughout the Italian campaign. He married Lelia Caetani of Ninfa, where Bassani wrote a large part of The Garden of the Finzi Co... read more
MH constructs an enthralling narrative of Vatican intrigue by drawing on Cardinal Ippolito d'Este's records of the papal conclave of 1559. She shows how both the papacy and the political fat... read more
It was the biggest seaborne landing in history; a difficult campaign, not least because of the heat. Its success was hard-won, and crucial to the course of the war.
This book was in our summer catalogue but we include it (exceptionally) in the present one too because it is outstanding. As in her 'Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire' (200... read more
Wildly delicious, deliciously straightforward - a celebration of good ingredients, sluiced with new olive oil and nipped with a pinch of salt...The beautiful farmhouse of Arniano - Amber's f... read more
The Tyrrhenian Sea to be precise: AG drifts down the western coast of Tuscany, Lazio and Campania, and on past Naples and the Amalfi coast to northern Sicily, spilling capers, lemons, ricott... read more
An exploration of the art, personalities and politics of Baroque Rome seen through the lens of Bernini's elephant carrying an obelisk. Lively, anecdotal and well illustrated.
A snakes-and-ladders novella about the misplaced confidence of a bossy widow, whose aspirations to a life of refinement and social elevation bring about her downfall. Ginzburg, as ever, is l... read more
Another of Ginzburg's lambent, ironic novellas: this time about a spoilt boy who grows into a feckless youth. Both he and his parents are blinded by unrealistic hopes, while his sister (the ... read more
Against the backdrop of WW2 and its aftermath, a young Italian woman marries and moves to her husband's village in the south. Ginzburg's characteristically limpid prose harbours may details ... read more