The Best Books to Learn Italian, Level by Level
The best Italian books for each level, from grammar guides and graded readers to Calvino and Pirandello, plus our data on which Italian classics read easiest.
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The best Italian book is the one matching your level. Start with a grammar guide and graded readers, move to short modern books like Calvino's Marcovaldo, then try the classics. We've also measured the classics in our own library, so you can see which one to open first.
Beginner (A1 to A2)
- Easy Italian Step-by-Step, Paola Nanni-Tate. Builds grammar in a sensible order, starting with nouns and articles, with plenty of practice.
- Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Italian Grammar, Marcel Danesi. Good for working through rules and exercises.
- Short Stories in Italian for Beginners, Olly Richards. Stories written for learners at about A2, so you can read early.
Intermediate (B1 to B2)
- Marcovaldo, Italo Calvino. Short, funny stories about a poor worker in a grey industrial city, each one built around a season. You can finish one in a sitting.
- Io non ho paura, Niccolò Ammaniti. A modern novel told by a nine-year-old boy in a village in southern Italy. The language is plain and the plot keeps you turning pages.
- Modern Italian Grammar, Anna Proudfoot and Francesco Cardo. A reference to look things up in when a sentence puzzles you, rather than one to read through.
Upper intermediate and beyond: the classics
Italian classics are older than many learners expect, and long sentences wear you out faster than hard words do. So we measured the openings of the Italian classics in our library.
| Book | Author | Words measured | Average words per sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Le tigri di Mompracem | Salgari | 2,900 | 17 |
| Cuore | De Amicis | 3,000 | 19 |
| Canne al vento | Deledda | 3,000 | 21 |
| Il fu Mattia Pascal | Pirandello | 3,000 | 22 |
| Senilità | Svevo | 3,000 | 23 |
Treat this as a rough guide. It covers only the openings, and the count is automatic. The numbers are also closer together than in our German or Spanish samples, so other things decide more here: older spelling like de' miei for dei miei (of my), pel for per il (through the) and cogli for con gli (with the) all turn up in these openings.
Our suggestions:
- Start with Le tigri di Mompracem. It's Salgari's pirate adventure, with the shortest sentences we measured and a plot that keeps moving. Expect a lot of ships and storms, and a few older word forms.
- Then try Cuore. It's written as a schoolboy's diary over one school year in Turin, so the entries are short and the everyday words are useful.
- Read Il fu Mattia Pascal when you want a real novel. Pirandello's story of a man who is taken for dead and starts again under a new name is one of the most famous Italian novels, and its narrator talks to you directly.
- Save Canne al vento and Senilità for later. Deledda's Sardinia is full of rural words, and Svevo's sentences were the longest in our sample.
How to choose
Read the first page before you commit. If you can follow what's happening, the book is a good fit. Every book in the table links to its opening pages for free, with a translation under every line and no account needed. You can also learn more about how reading helps.
Two grammar points come up on almost every page of these books: the imperfect that sets the scene in every story, and object pronouns. If they slow you down, try our free Italian grammar lessons, or our guide to passato prossimo vs imperfetto.
Our Learn Italian app has these classics in full with a translation under every line, along with vocabulary, grammar and graded reading to get you there. It's free to download, though some books and extra content need diamonds you earn while learning, or Premium.