Naples and Beyond: The Best Books Set in Southern Italy
Find the Best Books set in Naples and Southern Italy – Naples is a city like no other—chaotic and captivating, ancient yet defiantly alive. But beyond Naples stretches a wider Southern Italy: a landscape of volcanic coastlines, baroque cities, and remote villages, shaped by centuries of conquest, resilience, and passion.
Reading novels set in Naples and Southern Italy is one of the most immersive ways to understand this complex and compelling region. From Roman ruins and Bourbon palaces to modern-day neighbourhoods, these books capture the intensity and beauty of Italy’s south.
Whether you’re planning a trip to Naples, dreaming of the Amalfi Coast, Puglia, or Basilicata, or simply drawn to powerful place-driven fiction, these stories bring Southern Italy vividly to life.
Discover how Italy is portrayed in books.
Explore the Best Books set in Sicily and Sardinia.
Discover the Best Books set in Northern Italy.
Explore the Best Books set in Rome.
Best Books set in and around Naples
Set in a sun-drenched Naples teeming with everyday life, The Temptation to Be Happy offers a glimpse into the heart of the city through the eyes of Cesare Annunziata, a grumpy yet witty widower. From his flat in Naples, Cesare observes his neighbours and reluctantly begins to re-engage with the world, finding unexpected friendship and warmth. A winner of the prestigious Premio Strega and an international bestseller.
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 2015
- Original title: La tentazione di essere felici
- 256 pages
- Notable: winner of the Premio Strega
Read the full book page: The Temptation to be Happy
Few books capture the soul of Naples like My Brilliant Friend, the first volume in Elena Ferrante’s celebrated Neapolitan Novels. The story unfolds in a deprived neighbourhood, where childhood friends Lenù and Lila grow up amid the city’s stifling poverty and violence. Naples is portrayed with raw intensity: a place of both suffocating limits and searing memories. One of the best-selling and most highly regarded works of literature of the 21st century.
- Setting: Naples and Ischia.
- Publication: 2011
- Original title: L’amica geniale
- 331 pages
- Notable: An international bestseller and named No. 1 on The New York Times’ list of the Best Books of the 21st Century.
Read the full book page: My Brilliant Friend
In Gomorrah, Naples is not just a setting—it is the story. Roberto Saviano’s acclaimed investigative book delves into the underbelly of the city, revealing how the Camorra mafia infiltrates every aspect of life, from fashion runways to toxic waste disposal. With uncompromising detail, Saviano maps out a Naples defined by danger, corruption, and resilience—a city where violence and beauty coexist, and where telling the truth can cost you your life.
- Setting: Naples, Campania
- Publication: 2006
- Original title: Gomorra
- 318 pages
- Notable: winner of the Premio Dedalus and the Viareggio-Repaci Prize for best debut.
Read the full book page: Gomorrah
Though set two millennia ago, Pompeii vividly brings ancient Roman civilisation to life through the eyes of a young engineer. From the aqueducts supplying the Bay of Naples to the villas shadowed by Mount Vesuvius, Robert Harris (author of Imperium) crafts a world of political intrigue, passion, and looming catastrophe. For readers fascinated by history, the novel offers a gripping portrait of southern Italy as it was in AD 79, during the time of the Roman Empire.
- Setting: Pompeii
- Publication: 2003
- 304 pages
Read the full book page: Pompeii
In The House on Via Gemito, Naples is inseparable from the story of Federì, a frustrated artist whose bitterness shapes the lives of those around him. Told through the eyes of his son, the novel paints a richly textured picture of post-war Naples—its cramped flats, its social tensions, and the yearning of its residents to transcend their circumstances. Starnone’s award-winning novel (Premio Strega 2001) portrays Naples as a city where memory and identity are constantly renegotiated.
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 2000
- Original title: Via Gemito
- 480 pages
- Notable: winner of the Premio Strega
Read the full book page: The House on Via Gemito
Set in the glittering courtly world of 18th-century Naples, The Volcano Lover offers a lush portrait of a city alive with art, politics, and scandal. Against the backdrop of Mount Vesuvius, Susan Sontag recounts the tale of Emma Hamilton, whose life is intertwined with both beauty and upheaval. Naples is the stage for the sublime forces of nature, Enlightenment ideals, and irresistible passion.
- Setting: Naples, Mount Vesuvius
- Publication: 1992
- 432 pages
Read the full book page: The Volcano Lover
Malacqua transforms Naples into a surreal, rain-soaked city, where endless downpours flood the streets and time seems to dissolve. Pugliese’s cult novel blurs the line between reality and myth, as strange phenomena ripple through the city: singing coins, voices from castle walls, and the slow unravelling of civic order. Naples becomes a character in its own right—mysterious, submerged, and melancholic—offering readers a haunting meditation on urban life and natural disaster.
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 1977
- Original title: Malacqua
- 256 pages
Read the full book page: Malacqua
Sent to Italy to retrieve the wealthy Dicky Greenleaf, Tom Ripley becomes seduced by the glamour of the Italian coast near Naples and obsessed with Dickie’s privileged world, leading to a chilling tale of deception, envy and murder. The Talented Mr Ripley is a gripping psychological thriller, a true crime classic, and the first in Highsmith’s celebrated Ripley series. Many readers know the story from the 1999 film adaptation, but the novel stands on its own and perfectly captures the seductive beauty of Italy.
- Setting: the fictional Mongibello (Positano, Campania), San Remo, Rome and Venice.
- Publication: 1955
- 288 pages
Read the full book page: The Talented Mr. Ripley
A deeply moving collection of short stories and reportage by one of Italy’s most renowned twentieth-century authors, yet still little known among English-language readers. The stories paint a vivid portrait of life in Naples in the years after the Second World War, and are often said to have influenced Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, beginning with My Brilliant Friend.
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 1953
- Original title: Il mare non bagna Napoli
- 208 pages
- Notable: winner of the Premio Viareggio
In this enchanting memoir, Swedish physician Axel Munthe recounts how he transformed a ruined building on Capri into the beautiful Villa San Michele, overlooking the Bay of Naples. Through a series of vignettes, he reflects on his encounters with remarkable figures of his age and on his medical work in Rome, Naples and Paris. A bestselling classic of the early twentieth century, The Story of San Michele is a captivating portrait of life, medicine and culture in southern Italy, infused with the light and atmosphere of southern Italy.
- Setting: Capri
- Publication: 1929
- 368 pages
Read the full book page: The Story of San Michele
Other novels set in and around Naples
Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan
- Setting: Capri; New York
- Publication: 2020
- 368 pages
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
- Setting: Campania
- Publication: 2010
- 384 pages
- Notable: the author received the Somerset Maugham Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
God’s Mountain by Erri De Luca
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 2002
- Original title: Montedidio
- 168 pages
- Notable: winner of the French Prix Fémina étranger
The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 1970
- 192 pages
The Mortal Wound by Raffaele La Capria
- Setting: Mainly Naples; also Capri and Positano
- Publication: 1961
- Original title: Ferito a morte
- 191 pages
- Notable: winner of the Premio Strega
Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante
- Setting: the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples
- Publication: 1957
- Original title: L’isola di Arturo
- 370 pages
- Notable: winner of the Premio Strega in 1957 (Elsa Morante also wrote La storia – The History)
The Skin by Curzio Malaparte
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 1949
- Original title: La pelle
- 368 pages
Three Workers by Carlo Bernari
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 1934
- Original title: Tre operai
- 220 pages
Fantasy: A Novel by Matilde Serao
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 1883
- Original title: Fantasia
- 244 pages
Graziella by Alphonse de Lamartine
- Setting: Naples
- Publication: 1852
- Original title: Graziella
- 168 pages
L’Arrabbiata (The Fury) by Paul Heyse
- Setting: Capri
- Publication: 1854
- Original title: L’Arrabbiata
- 64 pages
- Notable: the author received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910
Best Books set in Abruzzo
Fontamara by Ignazio Silone (1933)
Set in a remote village in the Marsica region of Abruzzo, Fontamara tells the story of impoverished peasants in the 1920s whose water is diverted by a corrupt speculator aligned with the Fascist regime, plunging the community into hardship, resistance and repression. Written in exile, this book became an international success as one of the earliest anti-Fascist novels.
- Setting: A fictional village in Abruzzo, likely inspired by Pescina.
- Publication: 1933
- Original title: Fontamara
- 198 pages
Read the full book page: Fontamara
Triumph of Death by Gabriele D’Annunzio
- Setting: Guardiagrele and San Vito Chietino (Abruzzo)
- Publication: 1894
- Original title: Il trionfo della morte
- 535 pages
Best Books set in Apulia (Puglia)
Ferocity by Nicola Lagioia (2014)
Nicola Lagioia’s Ferocity (2014) is a dark, gripping novel set in Bari, in Apulia (southern Italy), where wealth and respectability conceal corruption and moral decay. It centres on the mysterious death of Clara Salvemini, the daughter of a powerful construction magnate, and her half-brother Michele’s search for the truth. The novel’s atmosphere, complex characters and social critique make it a compelling read. Ferocity won both the Premio Strega and the Premio Mondello.
- Setting: Bari (Apulia)
- Publication: 2014
- Original title: La ferocia
- 444 pages
- Notable: winner of the Premio Strega and the Premio Mondello (both in 2015)
Read the full book page: Ferocity by Nicola Lagioia
The House of Scorta by Laurent Gaudé (2004)
Set in a remote village in Puglia, The House of Scorta traces five generations of a family of outcasts and smugglers from the 1870s to the 1940s. Against the stark beauty of southern Italy, French author Laurent Gaudé paints a powerful portrait of endurance, poverty and the dignity of ordinary lives. Winner of the Prix Goncourt, this sweeping family saga is a love letter to the landscapes of Puglia and a moving meditation on fate and belonging.
- Setting: A fictional village inspired by Peschici in Puglia.
- Publication: 2004
- Original title: Le soleil des Scorta
- 289 pages
- Notable: winner of the French Prix Goncourt
Read the full book page: The House of Scorta
The Law by Roger Vailland
- Setting: Puglia
- Publication: 1957
- Original title: La loi
- 256 pages
- Notable: Winner of the Prix Goncourt.
The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch (1945)
Set in the ancient port of Brundisium (modern Brindisi), The Death of Virgil captures the final hours of the Roman poet Virgil as he lies dying. The vivid Mediterranean setting—harbour, heat, and fading light—forms the backdrop to an intense inner journey, making ancient Roman Brindisi feel both historically real and symbolically charged. Readers are drawn to the novel for its profound meditation on art, power, and the meaning of a life’s work.
- Setting: Brindisi (ancient Brundisium), southern Italy.
- Publication: 1945
- Original title: Der Tod des Vergil
- 496 pages
Read the full book page: The Death of Virgil
Best Books set in Basilicata
Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (1945)
Exiled to the remote villages of Grassano and Aliano in Basilicata in the 1930s, Carlo Levi recounts in Christ Stopped at Eboli his encounter with a forgotten corner of southern Italy. Blending memoir, reportage and lyrical reflection, he paints a compassionate portrait of a region marked by poverty and isolation, yet rich in humanity and resilience. A classic of twentieth-century Italian literature, the book remains one of the most powerful literary testimonies to the landscape and lives of the Italian South.
- Setting: Grassano, Aliano (Basilicata – Lucania)
- Publication: 1945
- Original title: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli
- 304 pages
Read the full book page: Christ Stopped at Eboli
Best Books set in Calabria
Revolt in Aspromonte by Corrado Alvaro
- Setting: Calabria
- Publication: 1930
- Original title: Gente in Aspromonte
- 120 pages