Twentieth Century Italian Novels
Explore the best Twentieth Century Italian novels with our curated list of iconic books. Discover works by Calvino, Moravia, and more that defined Italian literature in the 1900s.
Book
I'm Not Scared
by Niccolò Ammaniti
In the summer of 1978 in a small Italian village, nine-year-old Michele Amitrano loses his innocence of childhood when he accidentally uncovers a dark secret being kept by the adults of Acqua Traverse.
Book
The Conformist
by Alberto Moravia
Secrecy and Silence are second nature to Marcello Clerici, the hero of The Conformist, a book which made Alberto Moravia one of the world's most read postwar writers. Clerici is a man with everything under control - a wife who loves him, colleagues who respect him, the hidden power that comes with his secret work for the Italian political police during the Mussolini years. But then he is assigned to kill his former professor, now in exile, to demonstrate his loyalty to the Fascist state, and falls in love with a strange, compelling woman; his life is torn open - and with it the corrupt heart of Fascism. Moravia equates the rise of Italian Fascism with the psychological needs of his protagonist for whom conformity becomes an obsession in a life that has included parental neglect, an oddly self-conscious desire to engage in cruel acts, and a type of male beauty which, to Clerici's great distress, other men find attractive.
