Books to read in March 2025

In 2023, nearly 86,000 books were sold in Italy. If there’s already widespread fatigue in browsing through all the streaming platforms in search of something to watch—a search that, personally, ends half an hour later with my utmost dissatisfaction (so much so that I’m happily rewatching The Sopranos)—we can’t even imagine something comparable when looking for something to read. So, why not gather the most interesting releases in an article? I usually let my personal taste, publishers (Nottetempo, Edizioni e/o, 66thand2nd, NN Editore), podcasts (perhaps just one: Comodino by Il Post, hosted by Ludovica Lugli and Giulia Pilotti), and a good dose of curiosity and trust guide me. Here are four literary recommendations based on the latest releases: a love story, a journey around the Earth, a severed ear, and women locked away.

What to read in March 2025

Addio, bella crudeltà – Riccardo Meozzi (Edizioni e/o)

As I mentioned, Edizioni e/o is one of my favorite publishing houses—without them, we wouldn’t have Christa Wolf, Elena Ferrante, and debuts like this one. Released on February 12, Addio, bella crudeltà by Riccardo Meozzi rewinds the film reel, telling the love story of Lidia and Giovanni. Written by alternating the present with a reverse-chronological past, it is set in the early 1990s and feels both a relief and a marvel: a world without the Internet and everything that follows, the microcosm of a love story where power dynamics between the two protagonists are flipped before our eyes. Lidia, a fragile and disoriented teenager, becomes caustic and dominant, while Giovanni loses his tough, angry, and impulsive exterior due to illness.

Heroines – Kate Zambreno (Nottetempo)

In 2009, Zambreno felt like an outsider. After moving to Ohio for her husband’s new job, she started a blog: Frances Farmer is My Sister. Three years later, it became Heroines, a cult book in the United States (reissued last year and recently published in Italy by Nottetempo). Alternating between the personal and the political, Zambreno weaves the stories of ghosts, writers, artists, and women primarily known as “wives of.” She rejects the notion that they should be confined to a room of their own. A work of autofiction, Heroines uses the first-person singular to highlight how the personal is political, and how personal experiences can lead to an awareness of oppressive social dynamics.

La pelle del mondo – Montag (Il Saggiatore)

Released on February 25 by Il Saggiatore, this novel is the result of three minds: Niccolò Monti, Lorenzo Rossi Mandatori, and Luca Tognocchi. The severed ear on the cover immediately reminded me of Blue Velvet, David Lynch’s 1986 film, but unlike the ear found in the grass by Kyle MacLachlan’s character, here it is sealed, packaged, almost ready for use. The novel’s protagonist loses mobility in his right hand—what does it mean to inhabit a body when it becomes replaceable? In an era marked by technological determinism and brain-implanted chips designed to “unlock human potential” (in Elon Musk’s words), the Montag collective explores the philosophical and social implications of this trajectory.

Orbital – Samantha Harvey (NN Editore)

If we wanted to reflect on how (in)finite we are, we could turn our thoughts to the Voyager Golden Record, a disc carried into space by two probes launched in 1977. The record is akin to discovering a human fossil: it holds sounds, music, images—a relic, or an artifact. It is in this paradoxically dark environment, from this perspective, that Samantha Harvey writes Orbital, released in Italy on February 11 by NN Editore. This short novel captures the lives of six astronauts and cosmonauts across sixteen orbits around the Earth from the International Space Station (ISS). These are fragments of both earthly and space-bound life, filling the thoughts of these humans: the memory of a painting, a loss, a marriage, dreams of gravity.