Il Corno Neapolitan BOOK CLUB

Whether you’re looking for new reading inspiration or just wouldn’t miss a chance to fly to the sunny bay of Naples even if only on the wings of your imagination, Il Corno is excited to invite you to its new Neapolitan Book Club. Led by Dr Greta Colombani, this is the first book club entirely dedicated to fiction about and around Naples, be it by Neapolitan authors or set in the city and the surrounding area (with all selected books available in English or in English translation). The rules are simple: book your spot, read the book, and show up for an evening of relaxed and friendly book chat over a glass of delightful Campania wine or of refreshing Italian lemonade. All are welcome, of course!

Each session will take place at Il Corno from 6 to 7.30pm.

To book your spot for one or all of the sessions register via Eventbrite. Then, once you arrive at the event, you can choose between two ticket options: £5 a glass of wine and tarallo; £3 a soft drink and tarallo.

Programme 2025-2026

Thursday 23 October: Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults

Thursday 13 November: Giambattista Basile, ‘The Cinderella Cat’, ‘The Two Little Pizzas’, ‘Sun, Moon, and Talia’ from The Tale of Tales

Thursday 4 December: Andreé Aciman, The Gentleman from Peru

Thursday 22 January: Valeria Parrella, Almarina

*The English editions of all the books can be easily found in bookstores and online – as well as at Il Corno’s own little library, where you can read them while eating a delicious panuozzo or savouring a limoncello spritz!

BOOK DESCRIPTIONS

From the global literary sensation behind My Brilliant Friend and the Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults (La vita bugiarda degli adulti, 2019) is a powerful portrait of the passions, turmoils, and confusions of an adolescent girl struggling to find her place in the world and in her own family. Set during the 1990s in a Naples divided between two opposite and conflicting souls, the novel follows young Giovanna in her journey from the refinement and hypocrisy of the city’s heights to the excess and squalor of its depths as she embarks on a quest to meet her estranged aunt Vittoria and discover the truth behind her parents’ lies.

Not many know that some of the most beloved fairy tales of our childhood first appeared in print in the seventeenth-century collection by Neapolitan poet and courtier Giambattista Basile The Tale of Tales (Lo cunto de li cunti), where these stories have much darker tones and more disturbing twists than those we are familiar with. Of the fifty tales composing the collection, we will be discussing three: “The Cinderella Cat” (“La gatta Cennerentola”) and “Sun, Moon, and Talia” (“Sole, Luna e Talia”), which are early, gorier versions of “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty”, and the gastronomically delectable, though not less grim, “The Two Little Pizzas” (“Le doie pizzelle”).

After his bestselling debut Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman returns to Italy for an enchanting story of regret and revelation, love lost and found, and mystical powers against the backdrop of a dazzling Mediterranean summer. Infused with sensuality and magical realism, The Gentleman from Peru (2024) centres on a group of American college friends stranded in a luxurious hotel on the Amalfi Coast and on their life-changing encounter with a mysterious fellow guest, the Peruvian gentleman of the title, who appears to be gifted with strange, uncanny abilities and claims to have known one of them in a past life.

A tale about finding freedom and hope in the most unexpected place, Valeria Parella’s Almarina (2019) opens the door to the juvenile Pr*son of Nisida, a small island just off the coast of Naples, and to the lives of the young inmates that are confined there, surrounded by the sea but forbidden to ever take a dip in its waters. Shortlisted for the prestigious Italian Strega Literary Prize, this delicate and poignant novel explores the deep bond that forms between Elisabetta, a math teacher at the detention centre, and her new student Almarina, a Romanian sixteen-year-old with a difficult past, imagining how life can start over when two solitudes meet and save each other.

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Host or Publisher Il Corno - Oxford