PagineDante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, Boccaccio’s hundred tales, Machiavelli’s ruthless advice, a puppet whose nose grows when he lies — Italian classics laid the foundations of European literature. Here are 52 essential Italian books, from the Middle Ages to Calvino, Levi and Ferrante, with short guides to the great Italian authors, where to start, and many you can read free online.
New to Italian literature? Begin with one of these — or follow our step-by-step guide, What to Read for Italian Classics →
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Short biographies, what to read first, and every book of theirs on this list.
Dante Alighieri is often called the father of the Italian language. A Florentine poet and politician, he was exiled from Florence in 1302 and never returned. In exile he wrote the Divine Comedy — a journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory and Paradise, guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the woman he had loved since childhood (celebrated earlier in his Vita Nuova). Writing in the Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin, he made it the basis of modern Italian. He died in Ravenna, where he is buried.
Where to start: Inferno
On this list: Vita Nuova · Inferno · Purgatorio · Paradiso
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) was a scholar, poet and the first great humanist, who helped revive the study of classical Latin. His Canzoniere, 366 poems mostly about his love for Laura, perfected the sonnet — the “Petrarchan sonnet” that Shakespeare and countless others imitated.
Where to start: Canzoniere
On this list: Canzoniere
Giovanni Boccaccio was a friend of Petrarch and a passionate admirer of Dante. His Decameron (completed around 1353) imagines ten young Florentines escaping the Black Death of 1348 to a country villa, where they tell 100 stories over ten days — witty, bawdy, tragic and wise. It inspired Chaucer, Shakespeare and countless later writers.
Where to start: The Decameron
On this list: The Decameron
Niccolò Machiavelli was a diplomat for the Florentine Republic until the Medici returned to power in 1512; he was imprisoned, tortured and exiled to his farm. There he wrote The Prince (1513, published 1532), a short, unsentimental guide to winning and keeping power that made “Machiavellian” a byword for cunning. His Discourses on Livy and the comedy The Mandrake show a wider, republican side.
Where to start: The Prince
On this list: The Mandrake · The Prince
Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed (I promessi sposi), first published in 1827 and revised in 1842, follows two young lovers kept apart by a bullying nobleman in 17th-century Lombardy, through famine, war and plague. Manzoni rewrote it in the language of Florence to create a shared national Italian, and it is still read in every Italian school. Verdi composed his Requiem in Manzoni’s memory.
Where to start: The Betrothed
On this list: The Betrothed
Carlo Collodi (the pen name of Carlo Lorenzini) was a journalist and translator of French fairy tales. His The Adventures of Pinocchio, serialised from 1881 and published as a book in 1883, about a wooden puppet who longs to become a real boy, is one of the most translated books in the world.
Where to start: The Adventures of Pinocchio
On this list: The Adventures of Pinocchio
Luigi Pirandello questioned what is real and who we really are. In the novel The Late Mattia Pascal (1904) a man reads his own obituary and starts a new life; in the play Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921) unfinished characters invade a rehearsal demanding to be performed. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934.
Where to start: Six Characters in Search of an Author
On this list: The Late Mattia Pascal · Six Characters in Search of an Author
Primo Levi was a Jewish chemist from Turin who joined the anti-fascist resistance, was captured and deported to Auschwitz in 1944. If This Is a Man (1947; in the US, Survival in Auschwitz) is one of the most important testimonies of the Holocaust. The Truce describes his long journey home, and The Periodic Table (1975), with a chapter named after each element, was once named the best science book ever written.
Where to start: If This Is a Man
On this list: If This Is a Man · The Truce · The Periodic Table
Italo Calvino moved from neorealist war stories to dazzling fables. He gathered 200 Italian Folktales (1956), wrote The Baron in the Trees (1957), about a boy who climbs into the trees and never comes down, and then the playful experiments Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979), a novel about you, the reader, trying to read a novel.
Where to start: Invisible Cities
On this list: Italian Folktales · The Baron in the Trees · Invisible Cities · If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
6 of these are free to read in Pagine right now (📖 Read free). The rest link to a free public-domain edition or to Open Library, where many can be borrowed free.
Print it, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself or share it with a friend, book club or class. Every copy links back to pagineapp.com, and the free Pagine app tracks every book you finish.
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Android8 free books by Italian authors in Pagine — including titles beyond this list.
Every title on the list links to the free sources that may have it. Public-domain books are free to read and download; newer books can often be borrowed free.
Start with Inferno in a translation with notes, a canto or two a day. Each of the 34 cantos is short; the notes explain who the people are. Then continue to Purgatorio and Paradiso. Older translations by Longfellow and Cary are free online, and so are many Italian classics before 1930 — Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Manzoni, Collodi and Verga.
Pinocchio, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Dante’s Inferno, Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man are great entry points.
Dante’s long poem (completed around 1320) describes his journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise — guided by the poet Virgil and then by Beatrice — meeting historical figures who show the consequences of human choices.
Yes. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Manzoni, Collodi and other pre-1930 works are free in public-domain English translations, many in Pagine and on Project Gutenberg.
Giosuè Carducci (1906), Grazia Deledda (1926), Luigi Pirandello (1934), Salvatore Quasimodo (1959), Eugenio Montale (1975) and Dario Fo (1997).
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