Italy is a place that has ignited literary inspiration in foreigners for thousands of years. Since the time of Homer, who set big portions of The Odyssey in what is today Calabria and Sicily, the narrative of the expatriate wandering through the landscape-, art-, and food-rich Italian countryside has developed into a classic form.
These expats’ adventures are romantic, or educational, or problematic—or all three, like in the case of Odysseus. The premise is so irresistible it pops up on every genre shelf, with its own gusto particolare (that is, special flavor). Fantasists, horror specialists, romance writers, memoirists, crime and true crime writers have all joined the ranks of the Poet in this regard, and—wisely—almost all of them use the opportunity to plump their stories up with plenty of drool-inducing food writing.
I devour all these books, but I admit to a special penchant for the even more specific American in Italy sub-genre. With the rich two-sided history of Italian-American immigration, we Americans often have even more to win—or lose—from an Italian escapade, and the result is storytelling magic. Here are a few of my favorite books about Americans in Italy.
Torregreca: Life, Death, and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village by Ann Cornelisen
Ann Cornelisen made a career out of writing memoirs—four of them, as well as two novels—covering the 1950s and 1960s, when she lived in various parts of southern Italy working for the British charity Save the Children. Really, though, Cornelisen’s “memoirs” are in fact poetic and searing depictions of a Italy itself. I read and reread her books to experience the atmosphere of the impoverished Italian south as my immigrant grandparents would have known it. Torregreca: Life, Death, and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village, her 1969 debut, is a great starting place.
Murder in Matera by Helene Stapinski
New York Times journalist Helene Stapinski’s Murder in Matera fuses two genres, memoir and true crime, in a way that offers readers both the intense personal connection of a memoir and also the revelatory shock of cracking a cold case investigation. Stapinski heads to Basilicata to get to the bottom of the rumors about her great-grandmother Vita, a supposed “loose woman” and “murderess.” The truth that what Stapinski uncovers may change what you know about your own family’s immigrant forebears.
From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke
If you’re looking for a more uplifting memoir, Tembi Locke’s From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home is just the ticket, although it will break your heart before it heals it. Locke chronicles her move to her late husband’s native Sicily after his untimely passing from cancer. Come to this one for the celebration of life and for the romance, stay for the food.
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Now to move into fiction, where there is truly something for fans of every genre. I am, by day, a crime fiction editor, so I speak with some (perhaps dubious) professional authority when I say Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is one of the greatest crime novels of all time. The book, which follows con artist and serial killer Tom Ripley through Italy on a devious journey of identity appropriation, is one of the great pillars of the antihero fiction genre.
The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni
If your preferred genre is horror, allow me to point you toward Danielle Trussoni’s The Ancestor, the story of an Italian-American woman who learns she has inherited a noble title in a remote village in the western Alps. When she arrives at her ancestors’ castle, she realizes it contains a monstrous secret…
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms must be included on this list, whether you love or hate Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms, the story of an American soldier fighting in the Italian Army, is one of a short list of books that depicts World War I on the Italian front—a brutal and watershed moment in history. Hemingway was critically injured while serving as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, and his first-hand experience lends the text a realism that got it banned in Italy until 1948.
The Everlasting by Katy Simpson Smith
One of my favorite novels of the last decade is Katy Simpson Smith’s The Everlasting, a novel set in one neighborhood in Rome over four different epochs over two thousand years. One of these threads is a modern American microbiologist on a research stay in the Eternal City. Smith’s poetry and research come together into a singular Roman reading experience.
The Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga
Robert Hellenga’s The Sixteen Pleasures is about an American book conservator who goes to Florence after the historic flood of 1966 to help rescue flood-damaged books from a medieval convent library. The discovery of a volume of 14th-century erotica throws the book-collecting world—and the nuns—into a tizzy. Bibliophiles and Italophiles alike will delight.
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