Bibliography

FICTION

NON-FICTION

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

TRANSLATIONS

FICTION

• Mr Geography, a novel, Harville Secker, 2024.

• Hotel Milano, a novel, Harville Secker, 2023.

• In Extremis, a novel, Harville Secker, 2017.

• Thomas & Mary, a Love Story, a novel, Harville Secker, 2016.

• Painting Death, a novel, Harville Secker, 2014.

• Sex is Forbidden (The Server), a novel, Harville Secker, 2012.

• Dreams of Rivers and Seas, a novel, Secker &Warburg, 2008.

• Cleaver, a novel, Secker &Warburg, 2006.

• Rapids, a novel, Secker &Warburg, 2005.

• Judge Savage, a novel, Secker &Warburg, 2003.

• Destiny, a novel, Secker &Warburg, 1999.

• Talking About It, a collection of short stories, Hesperus, 2005.

• Europa, a novel, Secker & Warburg, 1997, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

• Mimi’s Ghost, a novel, Secker & Warburg, 1995.

• Shear, a novel, Heinemann, 1993.

• Goodness, a novel, Heinemann, 1991.

• Cara Massimina, a novel, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990.

• Family Planning, a novel, Collins, 1989.

• Home Thoughts, a novel, Collins, 1987.

• Loving Roger, a novel, Heinemann, 1986, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize.

• Tongues of Flame, a novel, Heinemann, 1985, winner of the Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask prizes.

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NON FICTION

• The Hero’s Way, Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna, Harville Secker, 2021.

• Italian Life, a Modern Fable of Loyalty and Betrayal, Harville Secker, 2020.

• Pen in Hand, Reading, Rereading and Other Mysteries, Alma Books, 2019.

• Out of My Head, On the Trail of Consciousness, Harville Secker, 2018.

• Life and Work, Writers, Readers and the Conversations Between Them, literary criticism, Yale University Press, 2016.

• The Novel, a survival skill, literary criticism, Oxford University Press, 2015.

• A Literary Tour of Italy, essays, Alma Books, 2015.

• Where I’m Reading From: the changing world of books, essays, Harville Secker, 2014.

• Italian Ways, on and of the rails from Milan to Palermo, memoir, Harville Secker, 2013.

• Teach Us to Sit Still, memoir, Harville Secker, 2010.

• The Fighter, essays co, Harville Secker, 2007.

• Medici Money, Banking, Metaphysics and Art in Fifteenth Century Florence, a work of history, Profile Books, 2005.

• A Season with Verona, Secker & Warburg, 2002.

• Hell and Back, essays, Secker & Warburg, 2001.

• Adultery and Other Diversions, essays, Secker & Warburg, 1998.

• Translating Style: English Modernists and their Italian Translations, Cassells, 1997.

• An Italian Education, Secker & Warburg, 1996

• Italian Neighbours, Heinemann, 1992.

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ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

• The full list of the fifty and more essays written for the New York Review Daily – the online edition of the New York Review of Books – can be found here

• Godwin and other novels by Joseph O’Neill, London Review of Books, 15 August, 2024

• My Friends, by Hisham Matar, London Review of Books, 25 April, 2024

• Reading Against the Novel, the essays of James Fitzjames Stephen, New York Review of Books, 18 July, 2024

• Lies and Sorcery, Elsa Morante, Times Literary Supplement, 13 October, 2023

• Buttockitis, Camilo José Cela’s The Hive, London Review of Books, 13 July, 2023

• The Illusion of Control, Italo Calvino, Times Literary Supplement, 27 January, 2023

• I’ve 71 Sheets to Wash, Alessandro Manzoni, London Review of Books, 5 January, 2023

• The Pope’s Many Silences, Pius XII, New York Review of Books, 20 October, 2022

• A Game of Low Stakes, Dead Souls, by Sam Riviere, New York Review of Books, 9 June, 2022

• The Beast He Was, ‘Kapo’ by Aleksandar Tisma, London Review of Books, 26 May, 2022

• A Gift for Overkill, on Willem Frederik Hermans,, New York Review of Books, 24 March, 2022

• A Venetian Poltroon, Gentelmanly Bullets, On duelling, London Review of Books, 6 January, 2022
• The Eternal Colony, The Invention of Sicily by Jamie Mackay, New York Review of Books, 19 August, 2021

• Vaporous Shapes, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts, London Review of Books, 1 July, 2021

• Rodari Have you seen my Hand? London Review of Books, 18 March, 2021

• Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of a Conflict, New York Review of Books, 11 March, 2021

• Milan in a time of coronavirus, Times Literary Supplement, 20 March, 2020

• The People’s Clowns, Dario Fo and Franca Rame, New York Review of Books, 12 March, 2020

• Homeland, Fernando Aramburu, New York Review of Books, 10 October, 2019

• Murder Italian Style, Edoardo Albinati’s Catholic School, Harpers Magazine, September, 2019

• Full of Words: Translations of Elsa Morante’s Arturo’s Island, London Review of Books, 15 August, 2019

• George Sand, Devils v’s Dummies, London Review of Books, 23 May, 2019

• Giambattista Basile, The Rabelais of Naples, New York Review of Books, 9 May, 2019

• Behind the High Walls, Giorgio Bassani’s Novel of Ferrara, Harpers Magazine, February, 2019

• Lamartine’s Graziella, London Review of Books, 21 February, 2019

• Chateaubriand, London Review of Books, 27 September, 2018

• Tolstoy v’s Tolstaya, London Review of Books, 26 April, 2018

• Keep the Ball Rolling, an essay on Natalia Ginzburg , London Review of Books, 29 June, 2017

• Thunderstruck, an essay on Victor Hugo, London Review of Books, 4 May, 2017

• How Mary Became George, an essay on George Eliot, New York Review of Books, November 9, 2017

• Mr Smith Goes to Rome, Italian reception of American literature under Fascism, New York Review of Books, October 12, 2017

• A Game of Love and Chance, Martutene
  by Ramon Saizarbitoria, New York Review of Books, June 8, 2017

• Yuk’s Last Laugh, an essay on Gustave Flaubert , London Review of Books, 15 December, 2016

• A Pair of Yellow Gloves, an essay on Stendhal, London Review of Books, 15 December, 2016

• Between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, a Life of Dante Alighieri , London Review of Books, July 14, 2016

• The Passion of the Bureaucrats, Skulduggery in the Vatican, , London Review of Books, February 18, 2016

• Montaigne: what was truly courageous, , New York Review of Books, November 24, 2016

• The Pleasures (and otherwise) of Reading Stephen King, , New York Review of Books, October 13, 2016

• L’avventura, an essay on Jhumpa Lahiri, , New York Review of Books, March 24, 2016

• In Some Sense True, an essay on J M Coetzee and Arabella Kurz, , London Review of Books, January 21, 2016

• The Road to Freedom, an essay on Simon Critchley, , New York Review of Books, January 14, 2016

• The Mystery of Primo Levi, , New York Review of Books, November 5, 2015

• Italy’s Seriously Playful Genius, essay on Antonio Tabucchi, New York Review of Books, June 4, 2015

• Revolutionary Italy, the Masterwork, essay on Ippolito Nievo’s Confessions of an Italian, New York Review of Books, April 2, 2015

• The Charms of Loneliness, essay on Haruki Murakami, New York Review of Books, October 23, 2014

• Quite a Show, essay on Georges Simenon, London Review of Books, October 9, 2014

• Muriel Spark, Moral Hypnotist, essay on Muriel Spark’s fiction and essays, New York Review of Books, October 9, 2014

• Bitten by an Adder: Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, London Review of Books, July 17, 2014

• The Ultimate Koan, essay on Peter Matthiessen’s novel, In Paradise, New York Review of Books, April 3, 2014

• How does he come to be mine?: Dickens’s Children, London Review of Books, August 8, 2013

• Why So Popular, essay on Fifty Shades of Grey, New York Review of Books, February 7, 2013

• David Eggers Abroad, New York Review of Books, October 11, 2012

• Do They See Through The Murk, essay on William Boyd and Andrés Neuman, New York Review of Books, August 16, 2012

• Joyce and Company, an essay on Joyce, London Review of Books, July 5, 2012

• Chekhov: Behind the Charm, New York Review of Books, April 5, 2012

• Do We Need the Nobel an essay on the Nobel Prize for Literature (New York Review, December 22, 2011)

• On Needing to Be Looked After an essay on the letters of Samuel Beckett (London Review, December 1, 2011)

• Dying Laughter an essay Inge Schultz, William Giraldi and Romantic Comedy (New York Review, November 24, 2011)

• The Dutch are Coming an essay on post-war Dutch novels (New York Review, October 27, 2011)

• A Most Delicate Invention an essay on banking, fairth and art in 15th century Florence (London Review, November 4, 2010)

• Making Fun of the Stories We Know an essay on Peter Stamm (New York Review, July 14, 2011)

• The Moralist an essay on Stieg Larsson (New York Review, June 9, 2011)

• Beware Remembrance Sunday an essay on Graham Swift (London Review, June 1, 2011)

• Life at the Core an essay on Colm Toibin (New York Review, April 7, 2011)

• The Truth about Consuela an essay on Phillip Roth (London Review, November 4, 2010)

• Strange Love in the North, an essay on Per Petterson, Hugo Claus and Gerbrand Bakker, in the NYRB, June 24, 2010

• America First, an essay on contemporary fiction and translation in the NYRB, July 15, 2010

• Stop It and Act an essay on Cesare Pavese (London Review, Feb 11, 2010)

• The Education of ‘John Coetzee’, New York Review, Feb 11, 2010

• L’impasse de l’Enfant-Jésus: some remarks on Beckett’s bilingualism, Letteratura e Letterature, 2010

• Semantic Polarities in the works of Thomas Hardy and D H Lawrence, Merope, 53-54, January-July, 2009

• In the Kangaroo’s Pouch, an essay on Geoff Dyer (New York Review, July 16, 2009)

• After the Earthquake, an essay on Ignazio Silone (London Review, July 9, 2009)

• Bloody Glamour, an essay on Giuseppe Mazzini (London Review, April 30, 2009)

• Knock on Wood, an essay on Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (New York Review, April 30, 2009)

• The Dark in the Piazza, an essay on Elsa Morante (New York Review, February 12, 2009)

• The Knife by the Handle, an essay on family biographies by Doris Lessing, Isabelle Allende, Miranda Seymour, Rachel Sontag and Marie Brenner (New York Review, September 25, 2008)

• Ann Enright, essay on the Booker-winning novel, ‘The Gathering’, (New York Review, January 2008)

• David Plante, essay on (New York Review, December 2007)

• Che pasticcio! an essay on Gadda, (London Review of Books), September 20 2007

• Let Sleeping Beauties Lie, an essay on Elfriede Jelinek, in the New York Review, July 19, 2007

• The Insurgent, an essay on Garibaldi, in the New Yorker, July 9, 2007

• Thomas Bernhard, essay on, (New York Review, January 11, 2007)

• Preface to Vitaliano Brancati’s ‘The Beautiful Antonio’, Penguin Classics, 2007

• True Scandal, a preface to Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, The Folio Society 2006

• Samuel Beckett, essay on, (New York Review, July 13, 2006)

• The Horrors of War, an essay on Curzio Malaparte’s work ‘Kaputt’ in the New York Review, 1 December 2005

• Surrender by Gondola, a long review of Jonathan Keates’ book ‘The Siege of Venice’ in The London Review of Books, 1 December, 2005

• An essay on Garibaldi and Rome appeared in The London Review of Books, July, 2005

• Looking Forward to the Past, on Umberto Eco, The New York Review of books, 9 June 2005

• An introduction to D. H. Lawrence’s three books on Italy appeared in a new Penguin edition of the books entitled D.H. Lawrence and Italy

• Preface to Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Contini appeared in Everyman Classics new edition of the book in Spring 2005, and also in the New York Review in June, 2005

• Description of a Struggle, an essay on Dostoevsky (The Nation, June 14, 2004)

• Retreat to Reality, an essay on the South Tyrol (New York Review, May 27, 2004

• SS Proleterka, an essay on Fleur Jaeggy (New York Review, February 12, 2004)

• Arthur’s Island, a short essay on Elsa Morante’s best novel (New Statesman, December 1st, 2003)

• The Outsider’s Art, essay on Cesare Pavese (New York Review, November 6th, 2003)

• The Fighter, essay on D H Lawrence (New York Review, September 25, 2003)

• Mad at the Medicis, an essay on the Pazzi conspiracy (New York Review, May 1, 2003)

• The Cosimos, an essay on the Medici family (New York Review, December 19, 2002) This is also published in Italian in La Rivista dei Libri, September 2003.

• Tales Told by a Computer, essay on hypertext narrative, (New York Review, October, 2002)

• Thomas Bernhard, essay on, (New York Review, June, 2002)

• Famous Women, an essay on Giovanni Boccaccio (New York Review, March, 2002)

• Letty Fox, Our Luck, an essay on Christina Stead (New York Review, 2001)

• Hell and Back, an essay on Dante’s Inferno (New Yorker, January 2001)

• On Henry Green (New York Review, November 2000)

• Fascist Work, on the Italian painter Mario Sironi (New York Review, August 2000)

• The Universal Gentleman, an essay on Borges (New York Review, 2000)

• The Hunter, an essay on G.W. Sebald (New York Review 25/5/2000)

• In Love with Leopardi (New York Review, March 2000)

• Imagining Robert (Lancet UK and New York Review, January 2000)

• On and off the High Road, an essay on the idea of national character as developed in Ian Buruma’s, Voltaire’s Coconuts (London Review vol 21, no.11, 27/5/1999)

• Unlocking the Mind’s Manacles, an essay on Gregory Bateson and his Italian disciples (New York Review vol. XLVI no. 17, 7/10/1999)

• Sentimental Education, an essay on Vikram Seth (New York Review vol. XLVI no.12, 15/7/1999)

• Gods and Monsters, an essay on Salman Rushdie, (New York Review vol. XLVI no.8, 6/5/1999)

• Sightgeist, an essay on José Saramago New York Review vol. XLVI no.3, 18/2/1999)

• A Prisoner’s Dream: Montale in English, (New York Review vol. XLVI no.2, 4/2/1999)

• Different Worlds, an essay on the limits of translation (in ‘Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose – Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 110’, The Nobel foundation, Stockholm, 1999)

• Prajapati: upon translating a paragraph of Roberto Calasso, The London Review of Books, 1998.

• Joyce, Saba, and Svevo in Trieste, The New York Review of Books, 1995

• Rethinking the Task of the Translator, Rivista internazionale di tecnica della traduzione, Trieste, 1995.

• ‘Translating Distance: an approach to Beckett through a consideration of the Italian tranlations of ‘Murphy’ and ‘Watt‘, Il confronto letterario, University of Pavia, 1996.

• Barbara Pym and the Untranslatable Commonplace, published in a collection of essays on Barbara Pym, IULM University, Milan, 1996.

• Translating the Evocative Spirit in ‘A Portrait of the Artist’ and ‘Ulysses’, Il confronto letterario, University of Pavia, 1994.

• Discovering Joyce through Translation, published in the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Translation, Kuala Lumpur, 1993.

• Translation, a Tool for Criticism, published in the proceedings of the FIT XIII World Congress, 1993.

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TRANSLATIONS

• Boys Alive, Pierpaolo Pasolini, NYRB BOOKS, 2023

• The Tablet of Destinies, Roberto Calasso, Penguin Classics, 2022

• The Book of All Books, Roberto Calasso, Penguin Classics, 2021

• The House on the Hill, Cesare Pavese, Penguin Classics, 2021

• The Moon and the Bonfires, Cesare Pavese, Penguin Classics, 2021

• Passions (a selection from the Zibaldoni), Giacomo Leopardi, Yale University Press, 2014

• The Prince, Machiavelli, Penguin Classics, 2009

• Literature and the Gods, by Roberto Calasso, Knopf, 2000

• Ka, (Ka) by Roberto Calasso, Knopf, 1998.

• La paura del cielo, (Last Vanities) by Fleur Jaeggy, New Directions, 1998

• Prima che tu dica pronto (Numbers in the Dark) by Italo Calvino, Pantheon Books, 1995

• La strada di San Giovanni (The Road to San Giovanni) by Italo Calvino, Pantheon Books, 1993. The translation was awarded the John Florio Prize.

• Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony) by Roberto Calasso, Knopf, 1993. The translation was awarded the Italo Calvino Prize.

• I beati anni del castigo (Sweet Days of Discipline) by Fleur Jaeggy, Heinemann, 1991. The translation was awarded the John Florio Prize.

• C’è un punto della terra (A place on Earth… A Woman in Birkenau) by Giuliana Tedeschi, Pantheon Books, 1992.

• I volatili del Beato Angelico (The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico), by Antonio Tabucchi, Chatto & Windus, 1989.

• La donna di Porto Pim (The Woman of Porto Pim), by Antonio Tabucchi, Chatto & Windus, 1989.

• Il filo dell’orizzonte (Vanishing Point) by Antonio Tabucchi, Chatto & Windus, 1989.

• Notturno indiano (Indian Nocturne) by Antonio Tabucchi, Chatto & Windus, 1988.

• Viaggio a Roma (Journey to Rome) by Alberto Moravia, Secker & Warburg, 1989.

• L’uomo che guarda (The Voyeur) by Alberto Moravia, Secker & Warburg, 1986.

• La cosa (Erotic Tales) by Alberto Moravia, Secker & Warburg 1985.

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