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Summer holiday books to match your destination

Finding the right books to take with you on your summer holiday, can almost be as difficult and stressful as scaling down your pile of clothes to fit into our suitcase. Once you have booked your stay at Agriturismo Cà de Runde, you can really embrace your holiday destination and soak up all the beauty, culture, history and emotions the Riviera dei Fiori has to offer, with books that are set in our region, the coastal towns or the hinterland villages. Holiday anticipation can start right now at home, or pack and read your favorite book in one of the lazy chairs in our seaview patio garden.

 

English Novels 

 

Last Train from Liguria - Christine Dwyer Hickey

In 1933 the main character, Bella Stuart, leaves her quiet life in London behind to work in Italy as the tutor of six-year-old Alec. He is the son of a young Jewish heiress and the elderly Italian aristocrat signor Lami. When Alec's father dies, Bella and Alec move to the summer residence of the family in Bordighera. When Bella meets Edward, the piano teacher of Alec, trust and friendship grows between the shy Bella and the mysterious Edward. When fascism takes hold of Europe and Mussolini introduces its anti-Jewish laws, Alec's life is in danger. Bella is instructed to flee Italy and bring the boy to safety. Also available in Dutch (De Laatste Trein Uit Ligurië) 

 

Doctor Antonio - Jhon Ruffini

English aristocrats, Sir John Davenne and his daughter Lucy, are stranded at the Italian Riviera after a road accident. They meet Doctor Antonio, a family doctor in Bordighera. Under the guidance of this mysterious Doctor Antonio, they slowly grow to love Ligurian life and its people, even as it's being torn apart by the struggles of the Unification fo Italy. Lucy and Doctor Antonio fall passionately in love, but the story reaches a tragic and explosive twist during the revolutions in the mid-ninetheenth century. This story imediatey became a bestseller in the England and caused a peak in British tourism travelling on the Ligurian coast and Bordighera in particular.

 

The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith (book and movie)

Tom Ripley's greatest talent is to imitate other people. Posing as an alumnus, Ripley ends up at a garden party where he does not belong, wearing a Prinston jacket which isn't his. He meets Herbert Greenleaf and pretends to know his son Dickie. Greenleaf's son is spending all his time in Italy and his father wants him back in America. He offers Ripley $ 1000 to visit and persuade him to come back. Arriving in Italy, Dickie Greenleaf bathes in luxury together with his fiancé, Marge Sherwood. Fascinated by Greenleaf's lifestyle and Greenleaf himself, Ripley is introduced in the high-society, carefree existence of the egocentric Dickie and his girlfriend. At one point Greenleaf has had enough of his visitor. During a final trip together to Sanremo, the most lurid scenes of the story happen. Thrown back into his own colourless existence, the mentally unstable Ripley snaps and goes a long way to get back at Greenleaf.

 

Other English novels that are set an the Riviera dei Fiori:

The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James

Between two worlds - Upton Sinclair

The Summer House - Christobel Kent

Monet and the Mediterranean - Joachim Pissarro

Pronto - Elmore Leonard

The Hotel - Elizabeth Bowen

Challenge - Sophie Weston

The Invitation - Lucy Foley

 

Italian novels

Brush up on your Italian language skills and read a novel in your favorite holiday language! The following Italian novels are set on the Riviera dei Fiori and the villages in the hinterland.

 

Il Conte delle Porrine - Claudio Restelli

An ancient legend tells the story of Fulcone di Villaret in 1312. This Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, was unpleasantly surprised by an incredible storm, during a journey by ship that took him from the Island of Rhodes to France. He was shipwrecked on the beach of Giunchetto and ends up in the town of Ospedaletti. The Grand Master miraculously succeeded in rescuing the mythical Templar treasure. Another myth tells that about five hundred years ago, Don Giuseppe of the Colla dei Rodi, parish priest of Ospedaletti and of the Santuario delle Porrine (the church right in front of our agriturismo), was assassinated by order of the second Count of Porrine, the last guardian of the treasury. From that moment his ghost began to haunt the quiet existence of the inhabitants of Ospedaletti, with shouting and inhuman howling. Nobody ever sees him. Suddenly the ghost makes his appearance...

 

La Contessa di Apricale - Claudio Nobbio

A story of love and intrigue in the Belle Epoque in Europe. The path of a beautiful and mysterious woman of peasant origin, starts from the village of Apricale in the Ligurian hinterland, passing through Nice and Paris and the court of the Romanovs. This woman, Anna Cristina Bellomo, better known as "the Countess of Apricale", was born into a family of peasant origin, but her ambitions led her to seek her fortune beyond the limits of her native land. She reaches Nice, where she manages to inherit the patrimony of Count De la Tour. After Belle Epoque adventures in Paris, fate takes her to Russia, to the court of the Romanovs. There she becomes a spy and lover of the tsar. The story tragically ends in Liguria.

 

Other Italian novels that are set in the medieval villages in the hinterland of the Riviera:

John Martin - Il Trombettiere di Apricale - Claudio Nobbio & David Riondino

La giocatrice di Apricale - Alessandro Giacobbe & Claudio Nobbio

L'ereditiera di Dolceacqua - Claudio Nobbio

La Sposa di Dolceacqua - Claudio Nobbio

Il Boia di Apricale - Claudio Nobbio & Claudio Restelli

 

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