Books to read in May 2025 The latest publishing releases straight from the Book Fair
May is the most important month for the publishing industry in Italy: the usual event takes place in Turin, at the Turin International Book Fair (Salone del Libro), now in its 37th edition, which this year has been held from May 15 to 19 at Lingotto Fiere. This is a particularly flourishing period, as many publishing houses carefully plan their book releases to coincide with the major book fair. I've gathered here some publishing news, featuring volcanic-origin beaches, young people on the edge of adulthood discovering themselves, and contemporary female writers exploring legal trials.
May 2025 book news: what to read in June
Aria Aber - A Good Girl (Mondadori)
A Good Girl marks the debut of Aria Aber, a writer born and raised in Germany who currently lives between Vermont and Brooklyn, USA. Aber has a background – and a present – as a poet, and her novel fits squarely within the wave of "sad hot girl books": the protagonist, Nila, lives in Berlin and studies Philosophy and Art History at Humboldt University. One night in a club, she meets an American man, Marlowe, who soon becomes her lover and her drug dealer. While reading, I was reminded of The Idiot by Elif Batuman: a more disenchanted, mysterious heterozygous twin ("A girl can go anywhere, though that doesn’t mean she can leave"). Released on May 6 by Mondadori, in the Strade Blu series, it was translated by Aurelia di Meo who also translated Send Nudes, previously discussed here.
Michela Panichi - La Cecilia (Nottetempo)
La Cecilia is the debut novel by Michela Panichi, born in 2000 in Naples, and winner - exactly twenty years later - of the Campiello Giovani prize. Cecilia is the protagonist of the novel, a thirteen-year-old girl sharing her name with an amphibian that has no gender distinctions. During a summer spent on the Maronti beach in Ischia, the novel’s narrative device revolves around her name: due to a misunderstanding, Cecilia assumes her younger brother’s name, becoming Luca in the eyes of her summer friends. You can read the first pages of the novel here.
Yasmina Reza - Normal Life (Adelphi)
A playwright and writer, Yasmina Reza is best known for God of Carnage, which inspired Roman Polanski’s film Carnage (2001). "Cruel" is the adjective most often used to describe her work: cruel and surgical. Published in Italy by Adelphi, her latest work, Normal Life, was released on May 13: a literary reportage powered by courtroom trials, with the courtroom serving as a mirror to examine the life we believe is not our own ("He whom we think is other than us is not").
Annie Ernaux - New BUR Letteraria Series
This is not just about one novel, but three: Annie Ernaux returns to bookstores in a new guise, through the BUR Letteraria series. The publishing house, part of Rizzoli, has launched a new series dedicated to contemporary novels that have already become modern classics. The French author, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022, inaugurates this collaboration between L’Orma Editore and BUR: as of April 29, three of her works have been released — Happening, Simple Passion, and A Frozen Woman. The plot, as in the best novels, is minimalist: revisiting, analyzing, and dissecting past events: an affair with a much younger man, marriage, the decision to have an abortion: "I want to plunge back into that time of my life, to know what was found in there."