About this Event
Last year we read about a teenage girl’s descent into the belly of Naples, life-changing connections blooming inside the walls of the juvenile Pr*son of Nisida, an encounter with a mysterious stranger under the dazzling sun of a summer on the Amalfi Coast, and gory fairy tales written by a seventeenth-century Neapolitan courtier. Now Il Corno is back with the second edition of its Neapolitan Book Club, the one and only 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), led by Dr Greta Colombani. The rules are, as usual, 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 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 2026-2027
Thursday 5 November: Elena Ferrante, Troubling Love
Thursday 3 December: Domenico Starnone, Trick
Thursday 21 January: Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover
Thursday 25 February: Elsa Morante, Arturo’s Island
*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
Before Lenu and Lila’s irresistible, troubled friendship there was Delia’s turbulent relationship with her mother and her quest to make sense of it in the wake of her sudden, mysterious death. Troubling Love (L’amore molesto, 1992) is Elena Ferrante’s award-winning first novel, a psychological thriller following the protagonist Delia’s return to the ambiguous, ominous, suffocating Naples of her childhood as she digs deep into family secrets, old lies, and buried memories to find out what led to her mother drowning that fateful night on the beach and how she can reconcile herself with the truth of who the woman really was and of her own past now resurfacing to haunt her.
[We don’t want to spoil the novel for readers who prefer to go in blind, but be advised that it might be wise to check the book’s content warnings if there are dark topics you may wish to avoid: you can write to us and we’ll share them with you]
When Daniele, an over seventy-year-old illustrator living in isolation in northern Italy, agrees to go back to Naples to babysit his four-year-old grandson while his daughter and her husband are away for a conference, what enfolds is an amusing, at times playful, at times treacherous, duel between child and older man, a generational clash between the unruliness and vitality of the former and the disillusionment and tiredness of the latter. Taking place over just three days within the walls of Daniele’s childhood home, Trick (Scherzetto, 2016) by Strega-winning author Domenico Starnone is a sharp dissection of ambition, art, aging, and our fierce attachment to life, both past and yet to come.
A tumultuous city on the verge of revolution. An English diplomat with an all-consuming interest in volcanoes. A low-born former courtesan with intoxicating beauty and charm. A dashing naval hero returning from a great victory at sea. A scandal that rocked society to its core. In The Volcano Lover (1992), acclaimed American critic and writer Susan Sontag plunges us into late eighteenth-century Naples, reimagining the lives, loves, and passions of the British ambassador Sir William Hamilton, his second wife Emma, and her lover, the Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson, in a sweeping historical novel that is also a profound exploration of gender, class, and the intricacies of desire.
In the Bay of Naples, on the small, enchanting island of Procida, Arturo spent his childhood and early adolescence with his beloved dog, swimming, sailing, and reading mythical tales in absolute freedom, isolated from the rest of the world. But his dreamy existence is overturned by the arrival of his father’s new wife, a girl barely older than Arturo. A modern classic by one of the most accomplished writers of twentieth-century Italian literature, Elsa Morante’s Arturo’s Island (L’isola di Arturo, 1957) is a spellbinding coming-of-age story about longing and loss, the power of imagination, the collapse of ideals, and the baffling, inescapable process of discovering oneself.
Event venue & nearby stays
Il Corno - Panuozzo Bar, 40-41 Market Street, Oxford, United Kingdom
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.