Others: Positive "Two young Italian boys from different backgrounds form an incredibly strong connection when Pietro's family is on vacation in the mountains of northeastern Italy where Bruno lives. Over the years, they come to find the true meaning of friendship and camaraderie, even as their divergent paths in life test the strength and meaning of their connection"--
Lists: …
Ernest Hemingway
1950 · 308 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveThe story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second World War, and his love for a young Italian countess.
What made the match, strongest first
Federico De Roberto
1894 · 627 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveThe Viceroys was originally published in Italy in 1894, but didn't appear in English until 1962, 35 years after de Roberto's death. It also offers some fascinating bits of Italian history as it tells the tale of three generations of amoral Sicilian aristocrats, rapaciopus, ruthless, and intriguing, who struggle to retain their power in the changing world beyond their palace.
What made the match, strongest first
Robert Morey
2016 · 1 review
Others: MixedEveryone calls him "Sparrow." But his real name is Anthony Dominic Sparrano. A blond, blue-eyed youth of Italian descent. His home and The streets of a greying northeastern city. His The wilderness. This is the story of a boy, not yet a man, trapped in a time and place from which he must escape.
Italo Calvino
1982 · 276 pages · 1 review
Others: Positive"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives.
What made the match, strongest first
Umberto Eco
2000 · 527 pages · 2 reviews
Others: PositiveBorn a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino narrates the story of his life, from his adoption by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and his education in Paris to his arrival in Constantinople during the turmoil of the Fourth Crusade.
What made the match, strongest first
Kurt Vonnegut
1959 · 319 pages · 6 reviews
Others: Leaning positive"His best book," Esquire wrote of Kurt Vonnegut's 1959 novel The Sirens of Titan, adding, "he dares not only to ask the ultimate question about the meaning of life, but to answer it." This novel fits into that aspect of the Vonnegut canon that might be classified as science fiction, a quality that once led Time to describe Vonnegut as "George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer ... a zany but moral mad scientist." The Sirens of Titan was perhaps the novel that began the Vonnegut phenomenon with readers. The story is a fabulous trip, spinning madly through space and time in pursuit of nothing less than a fundamental understanding of the meaning of life. It takes place at a time in the future, when "only the human soul remained terra incognita ... the Nightmare Ages, falling roughly, give or take a few years, between the Second World War and the Third Great Depression." The villainous and super rich Malachi Constant is offered a chance to journey into the far reaches of outer space, to eventually live on the planet Titan surrounded by three beautiful sirens. There is the proverbial "small print" with this incredible offer, which Constant turns down, setting in motion a fantastic chain of events that only Vonnegut could imagine. The result is an uproarious, freewheeling inquiry into the very reason we exist and about how we participate and matter in the scheme of the universe. The Sirens of Titan is essential, fundamental Vonnegut, as entertaining as it is questing in search of answers to the mysteries of life. As a work of fiction, it is a sure leap, in terms of craft, over his first novel, Player Piano. His writing here is pared down, more concentrated and graceful, richly in the service of his remarkable ideas. Vonnegut summons greatness for the first time in The Sirens of Titan, where the search for the meaning of existence looks and sounds like a kaleidoscopic dream but leaves the reader with a clear and challenging answer.
What made the match, strongest first
Loved itthe story of a lifelong friendship against the star backdrop of an Alpine Village in Northern Italy even more than the friendship between the two protagonists what stayed with me from this book is the pro the narrator's relationship with his father one of the most interesting and Elusive characters I've encountered this year
