All prizes Italy
Italy · Since 1947 · For books in Italian
Awarded each July in Rome by the Fondazione Maria e Goffredo Bellonci to a work of fiction in Italian, voted on by the jury of the Amici della domenica.
The writer Maria Bellonci and Guido Alberti, owner of the company that makes Strega liqueur, founded the prize in Rome in 1947. Its jury, the Amici della domenica, had about 170 members then and has more than 400 today; schools, universities, Italian cultural institutes abroad and other bodies add further votes. Each member may propose one book published between March of the previous year and February. A committee admits at most twelve candidates. A first vote, usually in June, picks five finalists, plus a sixth when none comes from a small or medium-sized publisher. The final vote is traditionally held on the first Thursday of July at the Villa Giulia museum in Rome. The winner receives 5,000 euros. Winners include Cesare Pavese, Elsa Morante, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Umberto Eco. Mondadori has won most often, and the gender balance of winners has drawn criticism.
Showing 53 of 140 books. 87 aren’t in English yet: show all.
Strega 2025 · Winner
L’anniversario
Andrea Bajani · 50 when first published
Novel · 144 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Ten years after walking out on his parents for good, a son tells the story of his family: a father who ruled the house through subtle violence and a mother who gave up everything to be something in his eyes.
Strega 2024 · Winner
L’età fragile
Donatella Di Pietrantonio · 61 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:Thirty years ago, on a night when three girls vanished from a campsite in the Abruzzo mountains, Lucia was saved by chance. Now her grown daughter comes home from Milan and withdraws into silence.
Strega 2024 · Shortlist
Chi dice e chi tace
Chiara Valerio · 46 when first published
Novel · 276 pages · Crime, Love
AI-generated summary:In the seaside town of Scauri, the elegant, elusive Vittoria, who arrived in the 1970s with a girl who is not her daughter, is found dead in her bath. Lea, the town lawyer, refuses to accept it as an accident.
Strega 2023 · Shortlist
Dove non mi hai portata
Maria Grazia Calandrone · 58 when first published
Novel · 247 pages · Autofiction, Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:A poet reconstructs the story of her biological parents and their tragic end, from rural Molise to the outskirts of Milan in the boom years and to Rome.
Strega 2022 · Winner
Spatriati
Mario Desiati · 44 when first published
Novel · 277 pages · Coming of age, Migration
AI-generated summary:In a corner of rural Puglia, young people from the small provincial middle class are torn between a difficult love for their homeland and the urge to escape to big, inhospitable cities.
Strega 2022 · Shortlist
E poi saremo salvi
Alessandra Carati · 46 when first published
Novel · 239 pages · Migration, War, Family
AI-generated summary:Aida and her Bosnian family flee the war and reach Italy, where they must rebuild their lives: a domineering father, a mother who hides her love and a brother who falls ill.
Strega 2022 · Shortlist
Niente di vero
Veronica Raimo · 44 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A woman takes apart her own Italian family, in a flat where new walls and rooms keep appearing where there is no space, with irony and without any comforting rhetoric.
Strega 2021 · Shortlist
Il libro delle case
Andrea Bajani · 46 when first published
Novel · 268 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:A man known only as 'I' is told through the houses he has passed through, as a newborn, son, lover, intruder and father, each keeping the memory of who he was there.
Strega 2021 · Shortlist
Borgo Sud
Donatella Di Pietrantonio · 58 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On a long night journey to reach Adriana, her rebellious, reckless sister, a woman looks back on their bond and on the reluctant mother who wounded them both.
Strega 2021 · Shortlist
Il pane perduto
Edith Bruck · 90 when first published
Novel · 126 pages · War, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A woman who survived deportation as a girl goes back into the depths of memory, from the hell her persecutors prepared to the life she rebuilt afterwards.
Strega 2021 · Shortlist
L’acqua del lago non è mai dolce
Giulia Caminito · 33 when first published
Novel · 297 pages · Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:Gaia grows up in a proletarian family ruled by her strong-willed mother, Antonia, who moves them from the edge of Rome to the lakeside town of Anguillara, where Gaia's shame and anger harden into violence.
Strega 2020 · Winner
Il colibrì
Sandro Veronesi · 60 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:Marco Carrera lives a life of suspensions, fatal coincidences, terrible losses and absolute loves, always moving to stay where he is, from the 1970s into the near future.
Strega 2020 · Shortlist
Tutto chiede salvezza
Daniele Mencarelli · 46 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Autofiction
AI-generated summary:June 1994, during the World Cup: after a violent outburst, twenty-year-old Daniele is committed for a week to a psychiatric ward, where he shares a room with five men on the margins of the world.
Strega 2020 · Shortlist
La misura del tempo
Gianrico Carofiglio · 58 when first published
Novel · 248 pages · Crime · Guido Guerrieri, book 6
AI-generated summary:The lawyer Guido Guerrieri is visited by Lorenza, a dazzling girl he once loved, now worn down by the years. Her son is in prison for murder, and despite his doubts Guerrieri takes on the appeal.
Strega 2020 · Shortlist
Febbre
Jonathan Bazzi · 34 when first published
Novel · 327 pages · Autofiction, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In January 2016 a thirty-one-year-old man gets a fever that will not go away. Waiting for a diagnosis, he goes back to his childhood in Rozzano, the tough outskirts of Milan, as a stammering, gay, bookish boy.
Strega 2020 · Shortlist
Almarina
Valeria Parrella · 45 when first published
Novel · 123 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Elisabetta teaches maths at the juvenile prison on the island of Nisida, off Naples. Each morning she leaves her thoughts in a locker. Then a new pupil arrives, a Romanian girl named Almarina.
Strega 2019 · Winner
M. Il figlio del secolo
Antonio Scurati · 49 when first published
Novel · 773 pages · Historical, Politics · M, book 1
AI-generated summary:Milan, 1919: Benito Mussolini, a socialist leader expelled from his party and editor of a small newspaper, gathers the violent and the disaffected around him. A novel in which nothing is invented follows his rise from 1919 to 1925.
Strega 2019 · Shortlist
La straniera
Claudia Durastanti · 35 when first published
Novel · 304 pages · Autofiction, Family
AI-generated summary:Born to two deaf parents, a girl is taken from New York to a small village in Basilicata, then grows up and keeps moving, to Rome and London, piecing together a family whose story is one of bodies and words.
Strega 2019 · Shortlist
Fedeltà
Marco Missiroli · 38 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:Carlo and Margherita call it 'the misunderstanding': the doubt that cracks their marriage after Carlo is seen in a university bathroom with a student. She felt unwell and he helped her, he says, and the student confirms it.
Strega 2019 · Shortlist
Addio fantasmi
Nadia Terranova · 40 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A woman returns to her childhood home in Messina, which her mother is selling, and is confronted with the memory of her father, who disappeared years ago and whose body was never found.
Strega 2018 · Winner
La ragazza con la Leica
Helena Janeczek · 53 when first published
Novel · 364 pages · Historical, War, Love
AI-generated summary:On 1 August 1937 a procession crosses Paris for the funeral of Gerda Taro, the first female photographer to die on a battlefield. The friends and lovers who knew her before she was Robert Capa's partner remember her.
Strega 2018 · Shortlist
Questa sera è già domani
Lia Levi · 86 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Historical, Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:Genoa, the years of the racial laws: a Jewish family with a son who is a frustrated prodigy, a bitter mother and a wise but hesitant father must decide whether to stay or to flee, and where.
Strega 2018 · Shortlist
Resto qui
Marco Balzano · 40 when first published
Novel · 224 pages · Historical, Family, War
AI-generated summary:In Curon, a South Tyrolean village, the teacher Trina defies the Fascists who ban German, follows her deserter husband into the mountains and writes to her vanished daughter, as a dam threatens to drown the valley.
Strega 2017 · Winner
Le otto montagne
Paolo Cognetti · 38 when first published
Novel · 215 pages · Coming of age, Nature, Family
AI-generated summary:Pietro, a solitary city boy, spends his summers in a village at the foot of Monte Rosa, where he befriends Bruno, a cowherd his own age, and learns from his father to walk the mountains.
Strega 2016 · Winner
La scuola cattolica
Edoardo Albinati · 60 when first published
Novel · 1280 pages · Coming of age, Crime, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Rome in the 1970s: a residential neighbourhood and a private school where nothing seems to happen, until some former pupils commit one of the most notorious crimes of the era. One of their classmates looks back.
Strega 2015 · Winner
La ferocia
Nicola Lagioia · 41 when first published
Novel · 464 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:On a warm spring night a young woman walks naked and bloodied down the middle of a highway near Bari. When she is found dead hours later, she turns out to be the eldest daughter of the city's most powerful building family.
Strega 2015 · Shortlist
Storia della bambina perduta
Novel · 480 pages · Family, Coming of age · L'amica geniale, book 4
AI-generated summary:Elena, now an established writer, separated and with two daughters, returns to Naples for a youthful love, while her friend Lila, who never left the neighbourhood, has become its charismatic leader and a computer entrepreneur.
Also: International Booker 2016 shortlist
Strega 2015 · Shortlist
Chi manda le onde
Fabio Genovesi · 41 when first published
Novel · 471 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On the off-season coast of Versilia, Luna, an albino girl who sees with her imagination, her surfer brother Luca and their mother Serena, who raised them alone, are thrown off course by a sudden blow of fate.
Strega 2014 · Shortlist
La vita in tempo di pace
Francesco Pecoraro · 68 when first published
Novel · 664 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:On 29 May 2015, a disillusioned sixty-nine-year-old engineer flies home from Egypt, where he works on a synthetic replacement for the dying coral reef. On the flight his mind travels back through seventy years of Italian life.
Strega 2014 · Shortlist
Non dirmi che hai paura
Giuseppe Catozzella · 38 when first published
Novel · 250 pages · Migration, War, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Samia, a girl from Mogadishu with running in her blood, trains at night in an empty stadium and dreams of the Olympics, while Somalia sinks ever deeper into war and religious extremism.
Strega 2012 · Shortlist
Qualcosa di scritto
Emanuele Trevi · 48 when first published
Novel · 246 pages · Autofiction
AI-generated summary:Rome, early 1990s: a cynical, naive young writer takes a job at the Pier Paolo Pasolini archive, ruled by the irascible actress Laura Betti, who behaves as if possessed by the dead poet.
Strega 2012 · Shortlist
Il silenzio dell’onda
Gianrico Carofiglio · 50 when first published
Novel · 294 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Twice a week a former undercover officer walks across Rome to see a psychoanalyst, often in silence. Memories surface of surfing with his father and of years spent among corruption and betrayal.
Strega 2012 · Shortlist
Nel tempo di mezzo
Marcello Fois · 52 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Historical, Family, Love
AI-generated summary:In 1943, the year of hunger and malaria, Vincenzo Chironi sets foot in Sardinia for the first time, carrying only a document with his name. In Nuoro his grandfather, a blacksmith, and his aunt Marianna are waiting for him.
Strega 2011 · Winner
Storia della mia gente
Edoardo Nesi · 46 when first published
Nonfiction · 163 pages · Autofiction, Politics
AI-generated summary:A textile entrepreneur from Prato tells how his family firm and his city's thriving industry were swept away by globalization, and what it means to belong to the first generation poorer than its parents.
Strega 2011 · Shortlist
La scoperta del mondo
Luciana Castellina · 82 when first published
Nonfiction · 194 pages · Politics, Coming of age, War
AI-generated summary:In July 1943 a Roman schoolgirl's tennis match with Mussolini's daughter is cut short by the dictator's arrest. Her diary from fourteen to eighteen follows her path through war and liberation to the Communist Party.
Strega 2011 · Shortlist
La vita accanto
Mariapia Veladiano · 51 when first published
Novel · 186 pages · Family, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Rebecca is born so ugly that her mother never holds her and her father lets it happen. Raised by a beautiful aunt and a tearful nanny, she has perfect hands and a gift for the piano.
Strega 2010 · Winner
Canale Mussolini
Antonio Pennacchi · 60 when first published
Novel · 536 pages · Historical, Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:In the 1930s the Peruzzi, a large peasant family from the Po valley, are among the thousands of settlers sent south to farm the newly drained Pontine Marshes, led by the charismatic uncle Pericle.
Strega 2010 · Shortlist
Hanno tutti ragione
Paolo Sorrentino · 40 when first published
Novel · 384 pages · Satire
AI-generated summary:Tony Pagoda, a Neapolitan crooner who has had talent, money and women, feels his world changing. After a short tour in Brazil he decides to disappear there, until years later someone offers a fortune to bring him back.
Strega 2010 · Shortlist
Acciaio
Silvia Avallone · 26 when first published
Novel · 357 pages · Coming of age, Family
AI-generated summary:In the concrete blocks of Piombino, in sight of the steelworks and the island of Elba, inseparable thirteen-year-old friends Anna and Francesca test their power over boys, until Anna falls in love and Francesca feels betrayed.
Strega 2009 · Winner
Stabat Mater
Tiziano Scarpa · 45 when first published
Novel · 170 pages · Historical, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In a Venetian orphanage in the early eighteenth century, sixteen-year-old Cecilia plays the violin behind a grille by day and writes at night to the mother who abandoned her. Then a new violin teacher arrives: Antonio Vivaldi.
Strega 2008 · Winner
La solitudine dei numeri primi
Paolo Giordano · 26 when first published
Novel · 348 pages · Coming of age, Love
AI-generated summary:Two childhood episodes mark Alice and Mattia for life: a skiing accident that leaves her injured and a moment in a park when he abandons his disabled twin sister. As teenagers and adults their paths keep crossing.
Strega 2008 · Shortlist
Non avevo capito niente
Diego De Silva · 43 when first published
Novel · 368 pages · Crime, Satire
AI-generated summary:Vincenzo Malinconico, a Neapolitan lawyer who mostly pretends to work, is abandoned by his wife. Then he is assigned to defend a Camorra gravedigger, and the most beautiful woman in the courthouse falls for him.
Strega 2007 · Winner
Come Dio Comanda
Niccolò Ammaniti · 40 when first published
Novel · 406 pages · Family, Crime
AI-generated summary:On a rain-soaked plain of sheds and car dealerships, a violent father and his teenage son live bound by a fierce love, with two hapless friends. One stormy night the four decide it is time to turn their lives around.
Strega 2007 · Shortlist
I giorni innocenti della guerra
Mario Fortunato · 49 when first published
Novel · 240 pages · Historical, War, Love
AI-generated summary:In central Italy on the eve of the Second World War, a group of young people is caught up in what will become a civil war, while an English RAF pilot who loves Virginia Woolf and his close friend Edna, in bombed London, live parallel lives.
Strega 2007 · Shortlist
Mal di pietre
Milena Agus · 47 when first published
Novel · 144 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:A passionate woman marries late, when she had stopped hoping, and meets the great love of her life by chance at a spa where she is being treated for kidney stones.
Strega 2006 · Winner
Caos calmo
Sandro Veronesi · 46 when first published
Novel · 417 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On the day he saves a stranger from drowning, a seemingly accomplished man loses his wife. He takes to sitting in his car outside his daughter's school, and from that fixed point watches the lives of others come to him.
Strega 2006 · Shortlist
Pugni
Pietro Grossi · 28 when first published
Short stories · 157 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:Three stories of boys facing initiation into life: a well-mannered boxer who must meet a deaf, poor champion in the ring, two brothers given a horse each by their father, and a friend who suddenly decides he is a monkey.
Strega 2006 · Shortlist
La ragazza del secolo scorso
Rossana Rossanda · 81 when first published
Nonfiction · 374 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Asked why she became a communist and why she still calls herself one, without a party or a post, a woman questions her memory and tells the story of her life, politics as a sentimental education.
Strega 2005 · Shortlist
Per grazia ricevuta
Valeria Parrella · 31 when first published
Short stories · 105 pages · Crime
AI-generated summary:Stories set in a Naples far from folklore, among drug couriers and elegant art galleries, clandestine print shops and young graduates trying to escape the suffocating suburbs, about men and above all women chasing their desires.
Strega 2003 · Winner
Vita
Melania G. Mazzucco · 37 when first published
Novel · 448 pages · Historical, Migration, Family
AI-generated summary:In 1903 two children from a poor village in southern Italy, twelve-year-old Diamante and nine-year-old Vita, land in New York, where they must grow up fast amid exploitation, violence and the temptations of the city.
Strega 2002 · Winner
Non ti muovere
Margaret Mazzantini · 40 when first published
Novel · 353 pages · Family, Love
AI-generated summary:A surgeon's fifteen-year-old daughter is brought into his own hospital after a scooter accident. Waiting outside the operating theatre, he silently confesses to her a secret passion for a derelict woman, Italia, years earlier.
Strega 2002 · Shortlist
Le bibliotecarie di Alessandria
Alessandra Lavagnino · 75 when first published
Novel · 313 pages · Family, Historical
AI-generated summary:The saga of a family from 1870 to the end of the Second World War, growing like a knotty tree from ancestors far apart in place and social rank, and narrowing at last to a childhood and early youth.
Strega 2001 · Winner
Via Gemito
Domenico Starnone · 57 when first published
Novel · 480 pages · Family, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:In Naples, a railway clerk convinced he is destined to be a great painter rages against his job, his city and above all his wife. Decades later his eldest son tells the story of this overbearing, fabulating father.