I was born in the UK, in Lichfield, but moved to Italy in 1976 and to Rome in 1982. Over the
past forty years, Rome has become my city, my home, and my inspiration, as it has for
hundreds of thousands of other people during its millennia as caput mundi. It isn’t always the
easiest place to live, but it’s varied and colourful and endlessly stimulating. It’s provided a
backdrop to several of my novels and not only that. Rome is a character in its own right,
boisterous, elegant, breathtakingly beautiful, unutterably sordid. Roma è casa mia!
Pasolini’s films, Mamma Roma and Accattone, were among the reasons I decided to move to Rome in the first place.
Their blend of poetry and wretchedness chimed with my own vision of life at that time and I seized the chance to improve my knowledge of the city, of Italian and of Roman dialect, by reading his first novel Ragazzi di Vita, as soon as I arrived in the city.
Ragazzi di vita are hustlers, doomed from birth by circumstances outside their control, and I was drawn to the novel’s dark non-conformist romanticism, its refusal to compromise and the sheer texture of the language, which I only partly understood. It’s like Kerouac, but for real.
The “provocative” novel about hard-living teenagers in poverty-stricken postwar Rome, by the renowned Italian filmmaker (The New York Times).
Set during the post–World War II years in the Rome of the borgate―outlying neighborhoods beset by poverty and deprivation―The Street Kids tells the story of a group of adolescents belonging to the urban underclass. Living hand-to-mouth, Riccetto and his friends eke out an existence doing odd jobs, committing petty crimes, and prostituting themselves. Rooted in the neorealist movement of the 1950s, The Street Kids is a tender, heart-rending tribute to an entire social class in danger of being forgotten. Heavily censored…
Morante’s classic novel about the impact on Rome of World War 2 and its aftermath had been on my TBR list for decades but I only got round to it during the first Covid lockdown. I couldn’t have found a more appropriate time.
It’s a novel about oppression, from without and within, laced with the fear of death and an overhanging sense of impotence. This all sounds pretty grim, and the novel certainly doesn’t pull any punches, but it’s also vivid, deeply touching and an extraordinary picture of a city under siege.
It’s particularly poignant for me because I read it while I was holed up in the district of San Lorenzo, one of the main settings of the novel and a place where the destruction wrought by WW2 can still be seen.
History was written nearly thirty years after Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia spent a year in hiding among remote farming villages in the mountains south of Rome. There she witnessed the full impact of the war and first formed the ambition to write an account of what history - the great political events driven by men of power, wealth, and ambition - does when it reaches the realm of ordinary people struggling for life and bread.
The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son treats…
I loved O’Connor’s Star of the Sea and I was curious to see what he’d do with Rome, a city I can’t help seeing to some extent as my ‘hood.
Even writers who have lived in the city and know it well can make mistakes that shatter the illusion they’ve worked to create. But I needn’t have worried. Gripping, intriguing and beautifully written, part of what makes My Father’s House such a fascinating read is the way O’Connor portrays so accurately the intricate, often uneasy relationship between the Vatican and the city that surrounds it, in this case under German occupation.
Any account of Rome needs to talk about power, its uses and misuses, and this novel is pitch-perfect. Highly recommended.
From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Star of the Sea and winner of the 2021 Irish Book Awards Book of the Year for Shadowplay, comes a gripping and atmospheric new novel set in occupied Rome.
September 1943: German forces have Rome under their control. Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann rules over the Eternal City with vicious efficiency. Hunger is widespread. Rumors fester. The war’s outcome is far from certain. Diplomats, refugees, Jews, and escaped Allied prisoners flee for protection into Vatican City, the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country nestled within the city of Rome. A small band of unlikely…
I’ve always seen Muriel Spark as a kindred spirit, and her experience of Rome as mirroring my own, albeit on a more luxurious scale (although I did once live round the corner from her flat near Piazza Farnese).
Of the novels she set in Italy, my favourite is probably The Public Image, a story of revenge and dissimulation that captures the dark heart of the city at a time when it was known as Hollywood on the Tiber. It’s a wonderful portrait of what lay beneath the dolce vita and also, presciently, has a lot to say about celebrity culture and its manufacture. Listen up, influencers!
Spark chooses Rome, "the motherland of sensation," for the setting of her story about movie star Annabel Christopher (known to her adoring fans as "The English Lady-Tiger"), who has made the fatal mistake of believing in her public image. This error and her embittered husband, and unsuccessful actor, catch up with her. Her final act is only the first shocking climax-further surprises await. Neatly savaging our celebrity culture, Spark rejoices in one of her favorite subjects-the clash between sham and genuine identity-and provides Annabel with an unexpected triumph.
I discovered Bernhard—miraculously—in a provincial train station in southern Italy, where the bar had a selection of books on sale.
This was when Bernhard translations into English were hard to find, so my early experience of the writer, in my opinion one of the most extraordinary of his generation, was in Italian. His final novel, Extinction, is set in Rome and it’s a classic of Bernhardian nihilism, scratching at the itch of the absurdity that is life in the face of death.
Bernhard’s Rome is the yin of intellectual freedom to the suffocating and hypocritical yang of Austria. In the end, what I love most about this book is probably its exhilarating contempt for mediocrity and its capacity, I’ll admit it, to make me laugh out loud at just how awful life really is.
The last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus.
Franz-Josef Murau—the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family—lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends. On returning from his sister’s wedding on the family estate of Wolfsegg, having resolved never to go home again, Murau receives a telegram informing him of the death of his parents and brother in a car crash. Not only must he now go back, he must do so as the master of Wolfsegg. And…
Birthright describes what happens when 16-year-old Fiona discovers that she may have an identical twin and decides to track her down.
Her search leads her to a mother who may or may not be hers and to Maddy, a sister whose presence makes her question her own identity and everything she has known up to then. It also leads her to Rome, a fascinating, complex, multi-faceted city where nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The novel explores the lives of the twins through the squares and streets of the Eternal City, two lives reflected in the capital’s intoxicating, disquieting blend of squalor and wealth.
Not So Little Things by Kyle Ann Robertson unravels the meticulously crafted life of Tina, an artist engrossed in the intricate world of historically accurate miniatures. As she dutifully honors her deceased father's desire for her to follow in his artistic and historical footsteps, Tina's controlled existence is shaken by the emergence of long-buried secrets when she takes a commission to build a replica of Jake Martin’s family mansion.
Robertson navigates the delicate balance between Tina's devotion to her father's wishes and the disruptions caused by revelations from the past. The novel beautifully explores the complexity of familial expectations and…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion. Raised by her loving, wheelchair-bound Aunt Liddy, her father's sister, 33 year old Tina has become a miniature room artist and cherishes the control she has over her life in Northeast Georgia as she works hard to please her beloved dead father's wishes of following in his footsteps in art and…
