Written by Giovanni Verga in 1881, I Malavoglia – also translated as The House by the Medlar Tree – was originally supposed to be part of a 5 books collection – called I Vinti - , of which only this and the second one – Mastro don Gesualdo – were actually written. In such series, Verga wanted to explore human greed and individuals’ longing to climb...

The Leopard – Il Gattopardo, in Italian – is a book published in 1958 and written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957). The author didn’t live to see his work printed and made public as it came out a year after his death and in its full edition in 1969. The book gained immediate success and was awarded the Strega prize in 1959. Against the b...

Heart – Cuore in Italian – is a book published in 1886 and written by Italian novelist Edmondo De Amicis (1846 – 1908). Before becoming a writer, he served in the military in 1866, which would later give him inspiration for one of his works. He wrote poems, novels and books about travel, gaining ultimate fame with his most important piece – Heart....

Mario Calabresi, born in Milan in 1970, is an Italian journalist and writer. He started his career in 1998 as a parliamentary correspondent for ANSA and then in 1999 he began working at the Italian newspaper la Repubblica dealing with political issues.  In fact, he was first a specialist reporter and then became deputy editor-in-chief and consequen...

One, None and a Hundred Thousand is another masterpiece from Luigi Pirandello, published in 1926. It has been considered as the most original of his books which explores the deepest layers of personality when the main character finds out that the people close to him see him differently than how he sees himself.  As a matter of fact, the novel unvei...

"I can't rule out that our existence is decided by a few, by the beautiful dreams or whims of a few, by the initiative or the will of a few... Of course, it's an atrocious hypothesis. Even more disconsolate, you wonder how those few: smarter than us, stronger than us, more enlightened than us, more enterprising than us? Or individuals like us, neit...

“Two girls talking about books. They are Rory Gilmore, the protagonist of the TV series Gilmore Girls, and Michelle Obama, the real one. Rory, an avid reader, recommends the first lady an (endless) series of books to read while traveling for the Let Girls Learn initiative. Michelle will choose only one: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante”.  My B...

The Name of the Rose is the most famous work of Italian writer, essayist, linguist, and philosopher Umberto Eco (1932-2016) and it was published in 1980. Eco was a great scholar and author of different kind of works; he received several honours - among those, the cavaliere di gran croce ordine al merito della repubblica italiana in 1996 and honoris...

The Adventures of Pinocchio first came out in serial form in 1881 in the Giornale dei bambini (“Children’s Magazine”) and was later published as a book in 1883. It was written by Carlo Collodi (1826 – 1890) – whose real name was Carlo Lorenzini as Collodi comes from the name of the hamlet in which his mother was born – who was an Italian author and...

If This is a Man was written in 1947 by Primo Levi (1919 – 1987). He was a chemist who wrote this biographical work after his several years in a concentration camp. It was first published in 1947 and later in 1958 by Einaudi. It has been defined as one of the most important recounting of the Jewish extermination by the Nazis and it is about the yea...