ReadingRate · Best Books · 2026

The 100 best books from Italy

The 100 best books from Italy, ranked by literary regard. Difficulty and reading-time estimates where measured.

These 100 books are the highest-scoring eligible works currently in the catalogue for this selection. Ranked by literary regard, the best Italian books run from Dante's Divine Comedy — the summit of medieval literature — through Calvino, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco, and Elena Ferrante. This list ranks the top Italian works in ReadingRate's catalogue, each with a difficulty score and reading-time estimate.

These 100 books are the highest-scoring eligible works currently in the catalogue for this selection. This is a computed ranking ordered by literary regard, with a consistent order for equal scores. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. Catalogue coverage and the historical canon both limit what this list can represent.

About 663 hours for 100 of 100 books with measured lengths. Estimates use a 250-word-per-minute baseline adjusted for each book's difficulty. At two hours a day, about 332 days for those books.

1–10

  1. Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1320, difficulty 6.7/10, 8.2 hours)
  2. Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri (1315, difficulty 6.1/10, 7.8 hours)
  3. Paradiso by Dante Alighieri (1320, difficulty 6.3/10, 27 hours)
  4. Inferno by Dante Alighieri (1314, difficulty 5.9/10, 5.2 hours)
  5. Eclogues by Virgil (-37, difficulty 6.7/10, 47 min)
  6. Odes by Horace (-23, difficulty 5.1/10, 1.9 hours)
  7. Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas (1467, difficulty 8.6/10, 9.9 hours)
  8. Georgics by Virgil (-29, difficulty 4.9/10, 1.6 hours)
  9. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532, difficulty 3.6/10, 3.1 hours)
  10. Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (1921, difficulty 6.4/10, 1.7 hours)

11–20

  1. On the Nature of Things by Lucretius (-55, difficulty 4.6/10, 5.5 hours)
  2. Aeneid by Virgil (-19, difficulty 6.3/10, 8.3 hours)
  3. Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri (1294, difficulty 5.2/10, 1.7 hours)
  4. Canzoniere by Petrarch (1374, difficulty 7.1/10, 3.2 hours)
  5. Metamorphoses by Ovid (8, difficulty 7.8/10, 10 hours)
  6. Discourses on Livy by Niccolò Machiavelli (1531, difficulty 4.0/10, 8.3 hours)
  7. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1353, difficulty 4.7/10, 20 hours)
  8. Selections from the Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci (1948, difficulty 7.7/10, 20 hours)
  9. Cuttlefish Bones by Eugenio Montale (1925, difficulty 5.8/10, 4.8 hours)
  10. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (524, difficulty 5.4/10, 2.7 hours)

21–30

  1. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (1972, difficulty 6.2/10, 1.9 hours)
  2. Ars Poetica by Horace (-19, difficulty 4.9/10, 32 min)
  3. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi (1947, difficulty 4.6/10, 4.2 hours)
  4. The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari (1550, difficulty 3.4/10, 17 hours)
  5. De Vulgari Eloquentia by Dante Alighieri (1304, difficulty 6.9/10, 60 min)
  6. Heroides by Ovid (-15, difficulty 4.9/10, 3.5 hours)
  7. Amores by Ovid (-16, difficulty 4.6/10, 2 hours)
  8. Canti by Giacomo Leopardi (1835, difficulty 7.2/10, 1.9 hours)
  9. The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi (1986, difficulty 5.1/10, 3.6 hours)
  10. Enchiridion by Epictetus (125, difficulty 2.6/10, 22 min)

31–40

  1. Boccaccio: The Man and His Works by Vittore Branca (1975, difficulty 4.7/10, 20 hours)
  2. The Periodic Table by Primo Levi (1975, difficulty 5.9/10, 5.6 hours)
  3. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958, difficulty 6.4/10, 6.5 hours)
  4. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino (1982, difficulty 7.4/10, 7.3 hours)
  5. Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto (1516, difficulty 5.7/10, 23 hours)
  6. New Science by Giambattista Vico (1725, difficulty 5.9/10, 12 hours)
  7. Letters from a Stoic by Seneca (65, difficulty 3.6/10, 12 hours)
  8. The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni (1827, difficulty 6.0/10, 11 hours)
  9. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (180, difficulty 4.1/10, 5 hours)
  10. Discourses by Epictetus (108, difficulty 3.1/10, 6.5 hours)

41–50

  1. Satyricon by Petronius (60, difficulty 4.6/10, 2.6 hours)
  2. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1980, difficulty 6.4/10, 14 hours)
  3. On Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria (1764, difficulty 4.4/10, 2.2 hours)
  4. On the Sublime by Longinus (100, difficulty 3.7/10, 1.7 hours)
  5. The Golden Ass by Apuleius (170, difficulty 7.1/10, 8.9 hours)
  6. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (1988, difficulty 8.0/10, 21 hours)
  7. Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino (1983, difficulty 5.6/10, 2 hours)
  8. The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione (1528, difficulty 6.2/10, 9.3 hours)
  9. Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo (1923, difficulty 7.0/10, 12 hours)
  10. Fasti by Ovid (8, difficulty 6.1/10, 6.2 hours)

51–60

  1. The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo (1300, difficulty 4.1/10, 7.4 hours)
  2. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino (1965, difficulty 6.9/10, 3.8 hours)
  3. Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante (1957, difficulty 7.1/10, 11 hours)
  4. Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg (1963, difficulty 6.5/10, 6 hours)
  5. The Moon and the Bonfires by Cesare Pavese (1950, difficulty 3.7/10, 3 hours)
  6. The Day of the Owl by Leonardo Sciascia (1961, difficulty 6.1/10, 3.1 hours)
  7. The Truce by Primo Levi (1963, difficulty 3.9/10, 8.6 hours)
  8. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini (1728, difficulty 5.3/10, 9.8 hours)
  9. The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino (1957, difficulty 6.7/10, 5.6 hours)
  10. The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (1883, difficulty 3.7/10, 2.3 hours)

61–70

  1. The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga (1881, difficulty 5.9/10, 5 hours)
  2. History: A Novel by Elsa Morante (1974, difficulty 3.3/10, 14 hours)
  3. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani (1962, difficulty 6.3/10, 5.2 hours)
  4. That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda (1957, difficulty 8.1/10, 12 hours)
  5. Mandragola by Niccolò Machiavelli (1524, difficulty 3.7/10, 1.1 hours)
  6. Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino (1988, difficulty 4.9/10, 2.5 hours)
  7. The Art of Love by Ovid (2, difficulty 4.3/10, 1.3 hours)
  8. Mastro-don Gesualdo by Giovanni Verga (1889, difficulty 7.0/10, 8.7 hours)
  9. Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (1945, difficulty 5.4/10, 6.1 hours)
  10. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (2013, difficulty 6.3/10, 10 hours)

71–80

  1. One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello (1926, difficulty 6.1/10, 4.1 hours)
  2. And Suddenly It's Evening by Salvatore Quasimodo (1942, difficulty 5.5/10, 17 min)
  3. Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello (1922, difficulty 6.1/10, 4.1 hours)
  4. The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino (1952, difficulty 5.7/10, 2 hours)
  5. The Path to the Nest of Spiders by Italo Calvino (1947, difficulty 5.6/10, 3.6 hours)
  6. The Conformist by Alberto Moravia (1951, difficulty 6.1/10, 6.3 hours)
  7. Baudolino by Umberto Eco (2000, difficulty 7.0/10, 15 hours)
  8. Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo (1969, difficulty 5.7/10, 4.5 hours)
  9. Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi (1994, difficulty 5.9/10, 3.2 hours)
  10. Tristia by Ovid (12, difficulty 4.6/10, 1.6 hours)

81–90

  1. The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino (1959, difficulty 6.6/10, 2.5 hours)
  2. The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello (1904, difficulty 5.6/10, 6.1 hours)
  3. Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte (1944, difficulty 7.6/10, 13 hours)
  4. Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini (1941, difficulty 6.8/10, 3.9 hours)
  5. Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone (1936, difficulty 6.0/10, 7.6 hours)
  6. Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso (1581, difficulty 5.4/10, 8.9 hours)
  7. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (2012, difficulty 7.0/10, 13 hours)
  8. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011, difficulty 6.9/10, 8.5 hours)
  9. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici (2004, difficulty 6.4/10, 6.1 hours)
  10. Thyestes by Seneca (difficulty 5.3/10, 1.2 hours)

91–100

  1. Convivio by Dante Alighieri (1307, difficulty 5.6/10, 4.9 hours)
  2. Two Women by Alberto Moravia (1957, difficulty 4.9/10, 6.3 hours)
  3. Distant Reading by Franco Moretti (2013, difficulty 5.5/10, 5.9 hours)
  4. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (2002, difficulty 6.1/10, 4.1 hours)
  5. Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo (1970, difficulty 4.7/10, 1.4 hours)
  6. Odi barbare by Giosuè Carducci (1877, difficulty 5.6/10, 56 min)
  7. Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino (1963, difficulty 4.5/10, 2.4 hours)
  8. Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante (1992, difficulty 6.4/10, 3.5 hours)
  9. Florentine Histories by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532, difficulty 4.4/10, 7.7 hours)
  10. Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano (2006, difficulty 6.3/10, 7.1 hours)

Questions people actually ask

What are the best Italian books?
The Divine Comedy leads by a distance, followed by works from Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco, and Elena Ferrante. ReadingRate ranks the top entries by literary-regard data.
Is Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend worth reading?
It holds high literary regard and comparatively low difficulty — a rare combination on these lists, and one reason the Neapolitan novels are a common gateway into Italian literature.
Is The Divine Comedy hard to read?
Yes — it scores among the most demanding works in the catalogue, mostly for symbolic density and historical reference rather than sentence difficulty. A well-annotated translation moderates it considerably.